Deliquesce
by Miss Nihilist
Summary: Karkat's first mistake was introducing Dave to sopor. His second mistake was letting himself think that would be where it ended.
1. it's so dark, in my mind

**A/N: Happy Halloween! To celebrate spooky month, I'm bringing back a dead fandom with a headcanon/AU that I haven't seen explored before. At least, not like this. The concept is simple: trolls use sopor as a pacifying device but how does it affect humans? In canon, the trolls run out of sopor on the meteor (which is part of why Gamzee snaps) but for the sake of this fic, we'll say that Kanaya managed to successfully alchemize a really close substitute.**

**This was originally going to be a oneshot, but it got so goddamn long that I split it up. That is how it's supposed to be read, though, so if you can get through all of this in one sitting, that's how I intended it. (There might be some delay if you're reading this as I'm uploading it, because I'm going to do about an hour between each chapter to not spam people who have notifications.)**

_**READ ON ARCHIVEOFOUROWN FOR COLORED PESTERLOGS.**_

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Movie nights were their default activity to do together. Karkat didn't care much either way. He had seen every movie on the godforsaken meteor at least seven times and half of those had been with Dave ripping them to shreds next to him anyway. One sweep into their trip to the new session, when he settled in on the couch for another screening of a movie he no longer gave a shit about, and there was no longer any real enjoyment. It was something that they both did almost instinctively at that point. As if the day wasn't complete until they had wasted at least two hours staring at a flashing screen.

Even Dave's comments had dried up. No ironic proclamations of adoration or critical notes came from those stoic lips. As with every other night, Karkat grabbed the snuggleplane tossed over the back of the couch, curled up, and settled in on one side so that Dave could squeeze himself as tightly as possible into the other corner. It didn't really matter — they would end up pressed together by the time they were both ready to turn in for the night. Or, whatever counted for a night without a sun or moon to tell them so.

To tell the truth, Karkat wasn't paying attention in the slightest to the movie. It was one that he had picked out and insisted upon, despite Dave's vehement disagreement, but the images flashed by on-screen one after the other and Karkat's thoughts made no distinction. He did, however, take great notice of Dave's head resting on his shoulder.

It was hard to tell when he still had his shades on, but Karkat figured out a little over half-way into the movie that Dave was asleep. Humans didn't sleep the same way that trolls did and, in particular, Dave seemed as subtle as they came. But the soft rising and falling of his chest was a dead giveaway. As was the way he didn't pull away when Karkat shifted and Dave's face ended up pressed into the side of the troll's neck, steady breaths huffing over soft skin.

Instinct told Karkat to snap his teeth in warning, or perhaps slash if that didn't get his point across, but he forced himself to stay calm. Dave's human teeth were far too dull to do any damage. And, though he would never admit it, Karkat liked it when Dave fell asleep against him. As selfish as it was, it was probably the closest he would get to having any sort of fulfillment for whatever feelings he had for Dave. Karkat wasn't sure what he felt himself, just that it wasn't all platonic, but that it all agreed that having Dave's lips near his neck was a good thing.

He let the movie wind down and the credits roll, trying for as long as possible to prolong waking Dave up. It wasn't anything concrete but, aside from the obvious enjoyment Karkat got from being so close, he knew that his friend was tired. God Tiers apparently still needed sleep and Dave wasn't getting nearly enough. That was obvious to anyone who watched him drag himself around for more than five minutes.

Eventually, Karkat's eyelids felt heavy too. He knew from experience that sleeping on the couch in the mainblock was a dumb idea, mainly because the discomfort it caused in the morning was astounding. He reached up to set a hand on Dave's shoulder and shake him.

He didn't flinch when, without his breathing so much as stuttering, Dave's hand shot up and latched like a vice to Karkat's wrist. His claws were stopped a mere inch from Dave.

Sadly, Karkat was used to that sort of treatment. No matter how often Dave fell asleep against him, not even once had Karkat managed to wake him without getting assaulted for his efforts. It didn't hurt him, but the burning, pale pity that he felt for Dave always swelled uncomfortably in moments like those.

They stared at each other for a moment, both expressions carefully schooled not to give a thing away. Karkat broke eye contact first, shifting back, and Dave almost immediately dropped his wrist as he sat up straight.

"Another dayterror?" Karkat asked reflexively. Sometimes Dave felt like talking about it. Most times, he didn't.

It must have been a particularly bad dream. Dave avoided eye-contact entirely, staring at his hands folded in his lap. They were shaking. No matter how Dave seemed to try and control it, he only seemed to be making his trembling worse. After a moment, he shook his head. As upset as Karkat was to let it go, he knew better than to push. If Dave was ever willing to open up about his problems, Karkat was probably the first person that he would tell. That understanding would have to be good enough for him.

He sighed, placing a hand on Dave's shoulder. Karkat was careful to make his movements slow and obvious so that he could be easily stopped at any time if Dave didn't want to be touched. He didn't look too happy with it but allowed Karkat to initiate contact. Was that progress? "I don't know about you, but it's getting pretty old to watch you have a fit over something as instinctive and base as sleeping, Dave. I know that I've never offered before, but seriously. Spend a night in my recuperacoon with me. The sopor that Kanaya managed to alchemize is actually pretty goddamn good. If it can't get rid of your nightmares, it should at least make them more tolerable and help you stay asleep for longer." He rolled his eyes. "What do you have to lose? Certainly not any more precious hours spent asleep at this rate."

Dave scoffed. Either because he thought sleeping in a troll coon was ridiculous or because the mere suggestion of him losing sleep was so uncool that it actually hurt him for a moment. The human stretched and stood up, turning to give Karkat a hesitant look. "If I'm actually gonna try this — which I'm not because those bug beds of yours are freaky as shit — are you sure that you don't have any other coons anywhere? I'm not super keen on sleeping naked." The _"with you"_ clause went unsaid but Karkat heard it anyway, soaking in Dave's nervousness.

But if he was uncomfortable, he would just have to deal with it. Getting a good night's sleep was better for him than continuing to insist that he was too cool to admit when he had a problem. It was amazing that every troll on the meteor wasn't pale for Dave, he was so goddamn pathetic sometimes.

Rolling his eyes, Karkat got to his feet. "You can keep your clothes on if you want. Your God Tier robes are self-cleaning, aren't they? It won't be very comfortable, but fuck, your species is already so goddamn weird. Sleep in that if you want. As long as you're sleeping, I really couldn't give two blithering fucks about how you do it, Dave. Are you going to come with me to my block or not?"

He wasn't joking, but something that Karkat said got Dave to smile anyway. He shoved his hands into his pockets, floating idly a few inches off the ground the way that he always did when he was nervous and trying to avoid something. Like he thought that Karkat might grab him if he didn't put proper distance between them.

"Sure," he finally said with a roll of one shoulder. "I'm no stranger to rubbing my naked body in slime of dubious origins. I mean, why not? Life is already so goddamn weird."

"You're the weird ones," Karkat shot back. He turned, leading the way to the transportilizer that would take them to his block. "You suffer from nightmares but don't do a goddamn thing about it. What kind of dream bubbles are you running into for it to be that bad, anyway? Sopor slime makes it hard to focus on being awake and aware in there. Half the time I think I'm embarrassing myself more than anything, flailing around like a retarded grub with only half its touchstubs. I imagine it's pretty comical."

At the transportilizer, Dave dropped down from the air to be standing properly. He was grinning but he was clearly forcing it. Karkat could hear his bloodpusher fluttering in his fragile human rib cage and almost _taste_ how nervous he was. "Whatever, man. Looking like a drunk asshole in front of some dead people I never knew and don't care about—" He didn't stop talking as the transportilizer activated, whisking them away in a flash of white light, "—would make me a huge chump, to be sure, but I think my bruised ego will survive. It'll be stronger than ever, some experts may argue."

Seeing how Karkat's block was right up-ahead, he decided to cut in while Dave was taking a breath before their conversation got even more long-winded than it already was. "The only candidates for expertise here are the two of us, and since I'm far too putrid to ever be even slightly good at anything, let alone to the degree with which an outsider may classify me as an "expert," and your only arguable areas of skill are mixing shitty music to turn out even shitter _shit_ and dressing like an asshole, I think that successfully eliminates the both of us and renders whatever-the-fuck point you were trying to make completely and irrevokably moot." He opened the door to his block, waving Dave inside. "Now shut up before you make me regret offering."

Of course, Dave was still grinning like the insufferable prick he was, but he floated into Karkat's block without comment and didn't even look like that much of a douche while he did it. The lights were on their low setting so Karkat left it that way. If Dave had trouble seeing, he could take off his shades. It wasn't like he hadn't already shown his eyes to Karkat, anyway.

Thinking back on that event wasn't a good idea, though. It was the day that Karkat's feelings really started spinning between red and pale. Redrom vacillation was bad enough, but he always had a thread of blackrom for Dave too. Thus resulting in what "experts" liked to call: a total clusterfuck.

But they weren't in Karkat's block for quadrant vacillation or cultural sensitivity or anything as inane as that. He was there to be a good friend, not a good quadrantmate.

So, like any good friend, Karkat crossed the room to his recuperacoon and said, "The slime that Kanaya makes functions pretty much the same as our old shit, but you may want to consider undressing, Dave. It's not pleasant to sleep in this with clothes on."

Dave, predictably, made a stranged noise. He didn't protest, though. As he thought about it, Karkat went ahead and got his sweater off. They had never seen each other undressed before but he felt that they had seen enough movies with shirtless protagonists of their various species to not freak out too badly.

"You gonna keep your boxers on, man?" Dave had drifted closer, though he still didn't look all that excited by the prospect of what he was about to do. "Not that I'm not all for cuddling a slimy bro platonically with nary a stitch of clothing to be seen, but I've seen the kind of romance novels you recommend to Rose and I'm not all that eager to get up close and personal with that junk while I'm trying to sleep. A lady's first time has gotta be special, Karkat. Tender. And ideally, filled with as many tentacles as possible."

Karkat huffed as he shoved his pants down. He was, as a matter of fact, wearing boxers, thank you very much, _Dave_. "Don't call them tentacles, you ass clown. That's so heinous," he muttered. Then, speaking directly to Dave again, "Yes, _fuck_. If it's that big of a blow to your fragile pride, I can tolerate sleeping in my boxers. Satisfied?"

Had he not known any better, Karkat would have sworn that Dave was looking him up and down behind his shades. Almost checking him out, maybe. "Extremely."

Whatever that was about, Karkat didn't ask. Dave had finally caved and started undressing and having to coax him all over again wasn't something that Karkat had patience for. He kicked their discarded clothes into a twisted pile in the corner. Seeing his sweater tangled up with Dave's cape was sort of bizarre. It gave Karkat plenty of mental images, not all of which were very common between bros, he imagined. Not all of which even included the recuperacoon, unless it was Dave pressed up against it. Most of Karkat's thoughts suddenly included human beds. There were other things pictured in his mind's eye, but Karkat chose to focus on the bedding. Like Dave said, "tentacles" really had no place in what they were trying to do. Which was sleep, and not ruin the best friendship he had ever had with his unbearable, quadrant-blending, touch-starved, mating fondness _bullshit_.

"You can probably just drop in," Karkat finally said. He turned back to the recuperacoon, hefting himself up over the side and dropping into the slime. It was room temperate, so colder than his body temperature, but it would heat up faster with two warm bodies in it instead of one. "Try not to slam in. Go slowly. If you sink to the bottom I'm not hefting your fat ass back up."

Dave perched himself on the lip of the recuperacoon, experimentally dipping his toes into the slime. It was weird to watch him float without his obnoxious God Tier cape fluttering along behind him and even weirder to get a good look at human feet. They were just as blunt and useless as human hands. How the hell were these creatures the top of their planet's food chain? Why did that only make him pity Dave more?

"Fat? Damn, Karkat, I'm fucking wounded. All those squats were for naught, huh? I see now that my ass isn't anywhere near plush enough for your lofty standards," Dave drawled. He kicked his feet in the slime, seeming surprised by how firm it was. "I can't believe you want me to sleep in Jell-O."

Fuck it. Karkat was tired and at his limit with Dave's stalling. He grabbed the human by the ankle and yanked him down into the slime. Other than a reflexive shout of alarm, Dave went down gracefully, falling on his back in the sopor and sinking half-in. With a roll of his eyes, Karkat pushed down on his lower body so that that was beneath the surface too. It was uncomfortable to think about what sort of shit humans had going on behind their boxers. He was trying to sleep, not freak himself out.

"Dude, this shit tingles," Dave remarked. He didn't sound upset though, merely contemplative as he lifted a green-stained hand to his face.

Karkat grimaced. "If you try to lick any of that, I can and will kick you out."

Chuckling, Dave obediently lowered his hand. He flicked the surface of the slime, splattering Karkat with some. "Jeez, fine. Killjoy. It ends up in my body anyway, right? I kinda doubt that you guys can sleep in this shit without accidentally eating at least some of it."

"That's a lot different from intentionally putting it in your mouth," Karkat shot back with a huff. He sank down up to his chin in the sopor. "You sleep with your head submerged, by the way. Sopor is breathable. It might feel weird to you at first but try not to have a meltdown while you're adjusting to it and you should be fine."

Even as he followed Karkat's lead, lowering himself further into the sopor, Dave arched an eyebrow. He was still wearing those ridiculous shades. "Should be? That's not really a ringing endorsement, Karkat. I don't know about trolls, but humans like being able to breathe."

It was tempting to just shove Dave's head under the surface of the slime but Karkat held himself back. This was for friendship, not blackrom. "Yes, Dave. Both of our species enjoy the process of inflating our bellowsacs with sweet, sweet oxygen. Incredible. What a horribly coincidental evolutionary feature that happens to be necessary for the sake of successful cohabitation. Now, if you don't smother yourself in the goddamn slime right now, I am going to make you. We're both exhausted, so could you quit it with the attitude for once, thank me for my fucking impeccable hospitality, and go to sleep?"

Though Dave smiled for a moment it quickly fell. He made a hopeless gesture with his arms. "I'll take it under consideration. But, uh, what am I supposed to do with my hands, dude? It's kinda cramped in here, I don't know if you noticed."

Actually, Karkat had been trying very hard _not _to notice. With both of them sinking into the slime, their faces were no more than a head apart. It would be really easy to kiss Dave in that position. Really _fucking _easy. Instead, Karkat smoothly plucked his friend's shades from his face and set them up on the rim of the recuperacoon. Before Dave could start bitching about it, he wrapped his arms around the human the way that they often did whenever Dave had the courage to ask him to cuddle. It was a lot easier in the slime, without a mattress or couch to limit their movements.

"We can sleep like this," Karkat sighed, as if his bloodpusher wasn't slamming in his ears as a direct result of being practically naked and pressed against Dave. "If it's not uncool enough for you, at least. I wouldn't want to do something as disgusting as take away your "cool factor." It's practically all you have."

"Yeah." Dave agreed absently. He lifted his arms from the sopor, wrapping them loosely around the small of Karkat's back in turn. He swallowed hard. Even without being able to see his face from their current position, Karkat was willing to bet that Dave had his eyes wide open and fixated on a menial object in the distance. "This is fine, dude. We can… yeah. Nothing we haven't done before, right?"

Karkat nodded. "Right." He waited for Dave to relax a little before pulling him along as he sank beneath the surface of the sopor. As expected, Dave resisted at first but went along with it with surprisingly little coaxing.

Under the surface, Dave was green-tinted and fuzzy above him. Karkat watched him carefully, waiting for the human to let go of the breath he was clinging to and try the sopor. When Dave eventually took a reflexive gulp of air, he stiffened and twitched in Karkat's arms as though fighting the urge to kick his way back to normal, oxidized air. It took him a few experimental breaths to relax into it, all the while Karkat watched and struggled against the urge to shush and pap him.

Eventually, Dave did settle against him. Their legs tangled together, interlocked in a way that was a far cry from platonic. Although, maybe Karkat should have picked up on that when their chests and hips ended up pressed to each other. Whatever Dave's hang-up with physical intimacy was, he didn't seem to have an issue with cuddling in sopor.

Exhaustion overtook, as it often did once someone was submerged in sopor. Karkat didn't fight it. He pressed his face against the curve of Dave's neck, for once without the protest his friend would have given under different circumstances, and fell asleep to the sound of their bloodpushers beating and the feeling of Dave's throat pulsing against him with every thump.

Like it always was with sopor, Karkat's dreams were formless, colorful blobs. If he saw anything horrific or traumatizing in the dream bubbles, then he passed right over them without a second thought. Which was the way that he liked it. Dreaming back on Alternia was often as awful as it was on the meteor when he didn't have sopor to keep the dayterrors away. And Karkat's bad dreams could never just be "bad." They had to be enough to keep him from sleeping for weeks, which was why the total amount of time he had spent asleep in his entire life was totaled at about half a sweep, when it should have been about one-third of his life the way that it was for more mentally sound trolls.

Even with the sopor, Karkat never slept for very long. He opened his eyes slowly to see the top of Dave's head, blond hair matted with slime and tickling his cartilaginous nub. He was fairly certain that humans would keep sleeping for a few more hours but as nice as it was to hold Dave, Karkat knew that he wasn't going to go back to sleep and he didn't feel up to being bored until they were both awake.

He removed his hands from around Dave, reaching behind him to gently unwind the human's grip from around his torso. Karkat thought that he had managed to pull it off without waking Dave, only to look over and nearly have his bloodpusher stop as he found two red eyes peering at him through the slime.

He choked on a gulp of sopor-infused air, pushing himself up to the surface. It was cold in the room when he came up, coughing little green splatters and gasping for clean air. A moment later, the warmth of Dave's body heat was next to him and there was a hand patting him between the shoulder blades. He had no idea what the purpose of such an action was but Karkat didn't want to waste his newly-found bellowsacs of oxygen by snapping at his friend so he said nothing and tolerated Dave's heedless pale flirting.

Once the coughing stopped, Karkat lifted his head to see a faint smirk on Dave's face. His expressions were bizarre without his shades to block them. Whereas the parts of his expression that were normally exposed like the set of his mouth and his eyebrows remained perfectly schooled, Dave's eyes were flashing with worry that looked out of place framed against his typical cool kid façade.

"You okay, dude?" Dave asked lightheartedly. "You didn't have to freak like that. If you wanted to get out I wouldn't've stopped you or anything."

Karkat chose not to answer that. The sopor was running off of his firm skin, leaving slimy residue trails. He noticed that Dave's soft, absorbent human skin had the opposite effect. He almost looked to be turning green, he was so coated in the shit. "I'm going to wash off in the ablution trap. You can feel free to stay here if you want." He looked over at Dave, but the human had already sake back into the sopor up to his lips. Fair enough, Karkat supposed. It was a lot warmer in there than it was in the rest of his block.

"Me? I ain't going anywhere. Have a fun shower, Nubs. I'll keep the bed warm for you." Dave cracked a genuine smile before slipping down underneath the sopor entirely, thus rendering any reply Karkat was about to shoot back completely pointless.

Although he was slightly exasperated, Karkat wasn't all that upset. He supposed that the sopor idea had been a success. It was too soon to tell but Dave didn't seem nearly as tired as he had been when they'd first gotten in. That was progress. The idea of sleeping in the recuperacoon regularly together was, admittedly, very nice. Probably more so than it should have been, but Karkat's emotions were already absolutely everywhere, so why not?

He pulled himself out of the coon, splattering slime onto the concrete flooring of his block. Deciding to leave the mess for later, Karkat walked into the small, conjoined ablutionblock. He could use the community one for better water quality, but he was sticky and still pretty tired and just wanted to rinse off.

Once he'd finished, he was mildly surprised to find Dave still sleeping in his coon. Karkat thought about waking him up but decided against it. Hell, if Dave was having a good sleep for once, Karkat wasn't going to make him stop. He had slept the "human way" for those first few perigees of the meteor trip when their sopor was completely dried out and it had been miserable. Human beds were good for cuddling but not much else. It was about time that Dave figured out the truly superior sleep quality he could get in a recuperacoon.

He got out his palmhusk and sent Terezi a message over Trollian. Maybe if she wasn't up to her nook with Vriska the way she had been for the last sweep, she would want to do some work on Can Town or something. The Mayor was working on an observatory for his citizens. Dave's flying powers would be needed for drawing the stars, but hell, they could set up the building with both feet firmly on the ground.

**carcinoGeneticist [CG] began trolling gallowsCalibrator [GC]**

**CG: HEY.  
CG: SO I KNOW THAT YOU'RE PROBABLY BULGE-DEEP IN SPIDER BITCH RIGHT NOW  
CG: BUT ON THE OFF CHANCE YOU FEEL LIKE PRYING HER MANY DISGUSTING ARACHNID LEGS OFF OF YOU  
CG: I WAS THINKING THAT WE SHOULD GO SEE THE MAYOR OR SOME SHIT. YOU HAVEN'T BEEN TO CAN TOWN IN AGES.  
GC: W3LL 1 WOULD V1S1T MOR3 OFT3N  
GC: 1F D4V3 H4DN'T B4N1SH3D M3 FOR 4CC1D3NT4LLY D3STROY1NG TH3 PUBL1C BOOKH1V3  
CG: OKAY THAT WAS FAIR.  
CG: I PETITIONED FOR YOU TO SERVE COMMUNITY SERVICE TIME OR JAIL BUT DAVE ARGUED THAT YOU WOULD PROBABLY START LICKING THINGS AGAIN, AND THE MAYOR AGREED THAT IT WOULD BE BETTER FOR THE CITIZEN'S STATES OF MIND IF YOU WEREN'T ALLOWED BACK.  
GC: W3LL H3'S PROB4BLY R1GHT 4BOUT TH4T  
CG: ANYWAY ALL OF THAT MEANS LITERALLY FUCK ALL.  
CG: DAVE ISN'T GOING TO BE JOINING US SO HE CAN CRAM HIS OPINIONS OF CAN TOWN'S SAFETY UP HIS SWOLLEN NOOK.  
GC: WH4T? WH4T'S H3 DO1NG TH4T'S MOR3 1MPORT4NT TH4N TH3 M4YOR?  
CG: UH  
CG: NOTHING. IT'S NOT REALLY A DECISION THAT HE MADE HIMSELF, IF THAT'S WHAT YOU'RE ASKING.  
CG: HE'S ASLEEP IN MY COON.  
GC: !  
GC: HUM4NS SL33P 1N COONS TOO?  
CG: WELL, DAVE DOES. NOW.  
CG: HE WAS HAVING NIGHTMARES AND TROUBLE SLEEPING. AND WE HAVE A PERFECTLY SUSTAINABLE SUPPLY OF SOPOR. PLUS THERE'S ROOM FOR BOTH OF US IN THE COON.  
CG: SORT OF.  
GC: GOD YOU'R3 SO P4TH3T1C WH3N YOU'R3 CRUSH1NG ON SOM3ON3  
GC: 4ND JUST 4S S3CR3T1V3 4BOUT 1T 4S 4LW4YS!  
GC: 1 C4N'T T3LL 1F YOU'R3 P4L3 OR R3D FOR H1M. SH4R1NG 4 COON 1S PR3TTY FORW4RD OF YOU  
CG: FUCK OFF.  
CG: EVEN IF I WAS CRUSHING ON DAVE, WHICH I CAN WHOLEY ASSURE YOU I AM NOT, THIS DOESN'T MEAN ANYTHING.  
CG: HE NEEDED IT. WHAT WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO, *NOT* HELP HIM OUT?  
GC: H3H3H3  
GC: YOU 4R3 SO P4L3 FOR H1M  
CG: THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH WORDS IN OUR SHITTY LANGUAGE TO ACCURATELY DESCRIBE HOW MUCH I WANT TO HIT YOU WITH A CHAIR.  
CG: DO YOU WANT TO HANG OUT IN CAN TOWN OR NOT?  
GC: SUR3 1 H4V3 NOTH1NG B3TT3R TO DO  
CG: NONE OF US DO.  
CG: THAT'S SORT OF THE POINT.  
****GC: WH4T3V3R  
****GC: 1'LL S33 YOU TH3R3**

**gallowsCalibrator [GC] ceased trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] **

**CG: FUCK, FINE.**

**carcinoGeneticist [CG] ceased trolling gallowsCalibrator [GC]**

Wow, what a fucking turn of events. Terezi was actually willing to pry herself free of Vriska for a few hours to do something in Can Town. Karkat had to thank his nonexistent feelings for Dave for one thing, at least. In focusing all of his quadrant confusion on a human who didn't know any better, his friendship with Terezi had grown a lot less awkward.

They fucked around in Can Town for a few hours while Dave was sleeping. Work on the observatory was put on hold, though. A fire had gone through the night before and burnt half of the suburbs and a huge chunk of office buildings. If repairs were not immediate and effective, Can Town's flourishing economy would most assuredly crumble. And as an aspiring Legislacerator, Terezi could not let such injustice go unresolved. By the end of the reconstruction process, which only took a few hours, Terezi had managed to put together a brand new and stunningly modern set-up for all of Can Town's displaced citizens. The Mayor gave them both an honorable medal for their help in the crisis.

All of that meant that Karkat had had a much better day than he did normally. Not that every day with Dave wasn't fun, but they weren't attached at the hip or anything. Karkat still spent a fair amount of alone. And it was doubly nice to hang out with Terezi without thinking about quadrants or having Vriska breathing down their necks.

After she left and the Mayor swore that he could take over without assistance, Karkat went back to his block. He had spent a few hours about and was considering getting something from the community hungertrunk but wanted to check on Dave. Usually, whenever their sleep schedules were different, one of them would end up messaging the other when they did eventually get up. The fact that he had yet to hear from Dave was starting to worry him.

Karkat was a little concerned that letting a human do full-submersion with sopor as their first experience with the shit wasn't a good idea. Even trolls, who had been utilizing the substance for millennia in their sleep cycles, could overdose on it. What sort of effects would it have on a human with no prior exposure to it? A tight frown on his face, Karkat walked faster.

Shoving his way impatiently into his block, it was a relief for Karkat to see that Dave was out of the coon. He started to smile only to realize that something was… _off_. Sure, Dave wasn't swimming in sopor anymore, but he was still coated in the shit. He was leaning heavily against the body of Karkat's recuperacoon, splayed out on the ground and looking dazed. Sopor still clung to his body like a second skin, dripping from his hair and boxers. Dave hadn't even bothered with his shades. They were exactly where Karkat had left them.

Hesitantly, Karkat crossed the block to stand next to the human. When nothing happened, he knelt down to look Dave in the eye. Thankfully, his friend was awake. He frowned as he studied Dave's face, pushing his sticky bangs out of the way to get a good look at his eyes. Karkat had spent enough time around Gamzee to recognize the signs of someone high on sopor. He didn't expect the symptoms to be exact across species, but it was a relief to notice that Dave's pupils weren't overblown. His eyes were a little hazy but Karkat brushed that off as an ordinary side-effect of the first time sleeping in sopor. Karkat remembered how hard he had crashed after his pupation when his lusus first introduced him to the stuff.

Expression softened into what hopefully looked sympathetic, Karkat said, "Hey, Dave. How's the floor?"

It looked like it took a monumental amount of effort to reply, but Dave shook his head slowly and smiled. "Fuckin' _swell_, Karcrab. I, uh, was gonna shower and go find you but I slipped on this fucking slime. Hit the ground pretty hard and thought I better just… lay here for a little while." He stretched out as if to prove that, yes, he was comfortable on the cold, sticky floor with his upper body plastered to the side of Karkat's recuperacoon.

Fine. If they were going to make sleeping together a regular thing, Karkat could dilute his sopor for the first few weeks. He didn't want to keep overwhelming Dave, especially if it left him so pan-rotted. His normal levels of idiocy were already kind of a handful.

With a sigh, Karkat straightened up and offered Dave his hand. It took the human a few tries but he eventually managed to correctly gauge the distance between their fingers and grabbed on tight. The sopor coating him and covering the floor didn't do anything to help, but after a few good tugs, Karkat got Dave back onto his feet.

"You could make this easier by floating," he grumbled as he tried to get a good grip on Dave that didn't end with him getting sopor all over himself, too. His efforts were doomed to fail.

"Oh." Dave blinked, as though he had somehow forgotten that he could fly. A moment later, the dead weight in Karkat's arms became a lot easier to manhandle as Dave let himself be nudged like a balloon toward the ablutionblock.

Washing his best friend wasn't exactly Karkat's ideal way to spend his time, but it wasn't like he had anything better to do. And it soon became clear that Dave was not in the right mindset to be cleaning himself. He would probably try to eat the soap or something. Besides, they could leave his boxers on. Karkat usually showered in whatever undergarments he had worn into the recuperacoon anyway because it saved the time of having to wash them separately and was faster.

He got Dave to sit down in the trap as best he could. It was somewhat of a tight fit, with Dave's lanky human proportions, but Karkat ignored it and flipped on the warm water. Once it was hot enough, he swallowed a resigned sigh and started brushing the globs of sopor out of Dave's hair. Thankfully, human hair was thinner and softer than troll hair, so it wasn't all that difficult. He said nothing while he worked and neither did Dave, though that might have been because he was too high off of corn syrup or whatever the fuck to care. The pale implications of what they were doing were fucking obscene. Karkat was glad that no one else was there to see the way they were behaving.

He had his claws running soap over the back of Dave's neck when the human finally stirred. Karkat paused but didn't remove his hands. When Dave made no move to protest, he continued. "Are you finally coming back to reality?" He asked sarcastically. "Do you feel like washing yourself, Dave? Or would you like for me to continue coddling you like the pitiful wiggler you seem content to act like?"

Dave shrugged and muffled a yawn. "D'know. Whatever you want is fine, I guess. I can wash myself, Krabkat. I mean, I'm assuming that I was washed when I was a baby since I was kind fucking useless at doing anything but shoving my foot in my mouth and shitting whenever I felt like it, so I guess that your metaphor was on point there, but I don't have any real memories of, uh, being "taken care of" like this." He shifted in discomfort, glancing at Karkat before quickly looking away again. "You don't have to do it if you don't wanna, though. I don't even know what I'm saying, I think I just liked… The way your claws feel when you aren't tearing my delicate, paper-thin skin into ribbons."

God, he was so pathetic. Had it been physically possible, Karkat was pretty sure that his pupils would be little diamonds after that whole spiel.

"Well, at least your mouth is working properly again." Karkat shook his head. Dave reached for the soap bar but he firmly ignored the human's attempts to wrestle control of the ablution process from him. Eventually, Dave gave up and let himself be scrubbed thoroughly clean. The worst of the sopor was long down the drain but Karkat wanted to get all of the residue too or else Dave would spend the next few days sticking to everything. After a few minutes of silence, he swallowed his nervousness and said, "Did you sleep well? I mean, was waking up sticky and bright green worth the effects?"

Letting out a huffing bite of laughter, Dave's head fell back so that he was resting on the hand Karkat still had on the back of his neck. He couldn't help it. Seeing any vulnerability was so rare from trolls but Dave, even as closed-off as he liked to pretend he was, was so _open_. So trusting and so willing and so, so fragile. Karkat had a choked up feeling in his throat. Like he wanted to protect Dave more than anything. Like he could stay right there, uncomfortably damp in his heavy clothes and getting soap all over his clean ablutionblock, and be perfectly content so long as Dave was.

If any similar epiphany struck Dave, he gave no indication of it. He closed his eyes, leaning back against Karkat's touch in a subtle, completely unintentional way that had his bloodpusher doing flips.

"Yeah. Yeah, it was so fucking worth it," Dave admitted with a shaky breath. "Sorry for laying mostly-naked and sticky all over your floor. It was a lot to process but I haven't actually slept that well in a while. Too many dead Daves." He cracked a smile that didn't have any feeling behind it. "But you probably want your coon back, so I'll—"

"No!" Karkat blurted out, flinging soap everywhere and dropping Dave's head in the process. The human caught himself, thankfully, and Karkat flushed as he quickly backtracked. "I mean, um… If the first night went so well, there's no reason you have to go back to your own block at night, Dave. I don't mind sharing if it's going to have such a positive effect on you. This was the outcome I was hoping for, in case you forgot."

Dave's smile turned teasing. "Even if you have to scrape me off your floor and dump me into the tub every morning?"

Karkat thought again about diluting the sopor in his coon. He could, of course. It wouldn't be difficult. But then he looked to the smile on Dave's face and the healthy flush of color to his normally flat skin. Getting his friend into the ablution wasn't the end of the world. A selfish part of Karkat actually enjoyed doing it. Dave had said before that he didn't want to mess around with interspecies relationships or even touch quadrants, so the only way for Karkat to act out his pale feelings was by doing so vicariously through unrelated situations.

He was such a disgusting person. But Dave was happy and well-rested. Regardless of what quadrant Karkat felt like switching to at any given moment, all four of them recognized those as positive qualities for any potential quadrantmate. And as a friend, it was good to see Dave getting better. He had seemed so dead on his feet before, like some sort of mindless shadow dropper shuffling around the meteor instead of Karkat's best friend.

So he nodded, thoughts of dilution long gone. "Even then," Karkat said a lot more confidently than he felt. "As long as you watch where your jamming your pointy elbows, consider my coon always open."

Funny. Dave didn't even look surprised. He mostly seemed relieved, rubbing his tired eyes as he chuckled. "Wow, holy shit. Thanks, Karkat." He stuck his hand out, making a grabbing motion. "Now how about letting me wash myself since you've been sitting there caressing my neck for the last five minutes?"


	2. i cross my heart, and hope to die

After some graceless protests and squawking, Karkat finally relented and let Dave have the soap that he could scrub his soggy boxers clean and get back into his God Tier outfit. In the meantime, Karkat busied himself by getting his husktop setup and cramming another random movie in. He knew that Dave wouldn't mind if he started the movie without him. Even if they hadn't wanted a good portion of their sweep on the meteor watching the same shitty movies over and over again, Dave never really cared about them the first time through, let alone any subsequent viewings. Movies were just an excuse they used at the beginning of their friendship to spend time together without having to admit that they were both lonely and sad.

Of course, they would still both never admit it, but at least while they were avoiding their problems they could have some flashy colors and occasional poorly-edited explosion effect.

It was about a fourth of the way into the movie when Dave eventually came out of the ablutionblock with a towel wrapped around his hair and his boxers still damp. Whatever the point of looking like that was, Karkat said nothing and kept his eyes on the screen. A few minutes later, Dave slid onto the couch next to him in his God Tier outfit and shades. Had it not been for the faint, salty smell of sopor still clinging to him, Karkat wouldn't have been able to tell that anything was different about Dave compared to any other day.

They were about three movies in before Karkat realized what time it was. He had thought that they were still in mid-day and had hours upon hours to waste with the same useless shit that they always did, but he was wrong. His palmhusk told him that it was well past time for him to get into the recuperacoon again. And that meant…

Fuck. How long had Dave been submerged in sopor?

He shook the thought away. If he wasn't going to dilute it, he could at least pay better attention to the time so that Dave didn't wake up every day acting like he was high. That would get old really fucking fast.

When the movie ended (one of Karkat's favorites, "_In Which the Main Protagonist Sits Idly 'Til One Day, He Finds Himself Horns Over Heels for Redrom Interest A, but Redrom Interest A is Flushing for Her Kismesis, Who's Auspistice's Moirail is the Main Protagonist"_ and he hadn't even realized it was on until he turned it off) he shooed Dave off from where the human was leaning against him and stood. One nice thing about sharing the recuperacoon was that Dave was already loosening up about cuddling. He had almost immediately ended up pressed against Karkat once they'd both settled into the movie.

"We should get to bed," he said after standing in silence for a moment. When Dave didn't react or make a move to comment, Karkat added, more hesitantly, "Do you, uh, _want _to use my recuperacoon? I wouldn't be upset if you wanted to go back to your sleeping platform."

Dave pushed himself up, floating until he was high enough to get his legs under himself and comfortably drop to the ground. The action made his cape puff up and his shades go crooked. Karkat tried and failed to not find it cute. "Nah, I'm good here. Unless you feel like kicking me out, but I think you'd do that yourself instead of offering me something that I want."

That was true. Karkat wasn't very big and he didn't have God Tier, but he had no doubt that he could throw Dave out of his room if he wanted to. The idea that the human would let himself be thrown out because he respected Karkat and his desires really was touching. Although, a small part of him wished that Dave wasn't such a goddamn good friend. That he would push sometimes so that Karkat had an excuse to push back.

"No, I don't mind. Provided that, this time, you can get in without the fucking production. I'm not going to spend ten minutes coaxing you into the slime every night," Karkat stated as he closed his husktop and walked over to his coon. The green slime stains from climbing out the night before (or, about seven hours ago, technically) were still there. It was easy to tell which marks were Dave's because he got them absolutely everywhere, whereas Karkat kept his localized in neat little rows of troll footprints.

He didn't hear Dave move, so he only barely refrained from jumping when his friend's voice sounded right next to him. Dave could move like a goddamn shadow when he wanted to. "You don't have to worry about that, Shoutkat. You've wooed me, sucked me into the succulent folds of a good night's sleep. My metaphorical cherry is metaphorically gone, all without a single metaphorical date to ease me into the start of a beautiful new relationship. I can't even be metaphorically angry, though. I'm too busy being taken by the seductive wiles of your purple bug pod. That one's not metaphorical, by the way."

Karkat snorted, shoving at Dave's shoulder. "Whatever. Shut the fuck up and strip before I change my mind."

"I knew it. You're only after me for my body, aren't you?" Dave let himself be pushed back, doing a neat backflip. It might have been elegant, had he not come back up with his cape flung over his head. He fixed it even as Karkat started to laugh, grinning easily. "This shit is really great, though. I mean, I've always been a light sleeper but it's sorta nice to just sit there and let something else do the hard work for me. Does that make sense?"

Being intimately familiar with the struggles of a good night's sleep himself, Karkat nodded, looking sympathetic. The dayterrors were a constant for all trolls but they were so much more bearable with sopor. As a mutantblood on Alternia, Karkat's access to sopor had been very limited, much like every other luxury or bodily need. It was either suffer unpleasant dreams or sleep in expires sopor. Or, as Karkat often chose, not to sleep at all.

"You don't have to explain yourself to me if you don't want to, Dave," he said gently. Not because he didn't want to hear what the human had to say, but because he would probably find it weird if Karkat started papping him in the middle of his vent because Dave was so pitiful that he couldn't help himself. "You're… my best friend. I want to help you, Dave, even if you don't feel like talking. _Especially_ when you don't feel like talking." He really wanted to kiss Dave. Shit.

He was saved from embarrassing himself when his friend turned away, chuckling as he shrugged his shirt off. Karkat kept his eyes focused on the back of Dave's head, stubbornly determined not to stare at all of that bare skin or think about the slick heat in his gut at the sight of Dave dropping his pants.

_Shit_.

"Y'know, I really appreciate it, Karkat. I can't talk about this shit with Rose and I was starting to think she's the only one that would understand. I, uh—" Dave paused and, in the sudden lull, Karkat fumbled with his clothes so that he wouldn't be the idiot still fully dressed. "I just… she would've made me talk about it and it's really… cool that you don't make me explain myself. I don't even know if I could, but knowing that you don't have any expectations or pressure on me… It means a lot, that's all." He shot Karkat a shaky smile, as genuine as Dave Strider could manage.

That was exactly the sort of intimacy that Karkat was afraid of. He thought about it before, carefully, crossing the short distance between him. It wasn't much, but he set a hand on Dave's shoulder and tried to communicate through that slight touch how much the moment meant to him. He probably did a God-awful job of it. "You don't have to pretend with me, Dave. Whatever problems you have, I _guarantee _that it's nothing I'm not willing to help you with. I want you to open up to me, but not to prove some point or cross a societal checkpoint in the intimacy of our friendship. I'm fine with whatever pace you want to set, so long as it works for you. And if you ever feel ready to talk, I want you to know that I'm ready to listen."

Dave cracked a smile. "Dude. This is gay as hell." But he set a hand on Karkat's wrist, letting it stay where it was, so it didn't seem like that was a bad thing.

Biting back a grin of his own, Karkat quirked a brow. "Does that mean you're not going to get into the coon? You and Rose are always going on about Freudian and his "slips." Unless you'll agree to relax the cool kid jokes and go to sleep. That would be preferable and help to avoid any conversational pitfalls."

"Oh, yeah. Definitely, dude," Dave agreed with a nod. He dropped his hand and stepped away, setting his shades down on the edge of the coon before pulling himself up. He slid in with a slick-sounding pop that was definitely intentional.

Once it sounded like he had settled down, Karkat clambered up after him and dropped down. He was surprised to find Dave already enfolded in sopor, though not nearly as surprised as he was to feel a hand yank hard on his ankle and drag him under the slime. For a second, Karkat thought to lash out or fight it, but Dave was making muffled huffing sounds that were definitely laughter and the sound was maybe the slightest bit relaxing.

It took Karkat aback at first, how much Dave seemed to enjoy sleeping in sopor. For all that he had tease Karkat for his "oozing insect carcass bed," it seemed more than compatible with humans. He wondered if Dave would want one of his own. Hopefully not — Karkat enjoyed having someone sleeping with him. It was comfortable in a way that it shouldn't have been.

Nonetheless, Dave folded his arms behind Karkat's back and pulled him close. Again they pressed together, breaths evening out as it became far easier than normal to sleep.

The next few wipes were much of the same… Like the entirety of the time spent on the meteor. Dave quickly made himself at home in Karkat's recuperacoon and waking him up gradually improved. At first, he resisted being awake entirely, but once Karkat was able to coax Dave out of the sopor on command it became easier for him to retain normal amounts of energy when he first woke up. As Karkat had expected, starting Dave off with a full dose of sopor wasn't the smartest choice, but the human was adjusting well. It was a bit of a slog the first wipe, but it was undeniably improving afterward. Some days, they didn't leave Karkat's block at all and set themselves in front of his husktop for shitty movies and lazy conversations. It was almost like they had moved in together. Troll society didn't do that except during drone season, wherein matesprits were expected to be together and kismesises should at least be in near proximity. Human movies had the concept, though. It was a weird concept at first, to share a space as personalized and private as his block with another person, yet there Karkat was, doing it anyway. He had to admit, with as big and empty as the meteor was and his old hive had been, the idea of always having Dave there at his side was comforting.

He would never again insult Terezi or Vriska for being clingy. They were right.

Not that Dave and Karkat didn't still spend time apart or anything. On one instance, Kanaya had asked Karkat to hang out, mostly for relationship gossip as she was one of the few in their friend group who recognized what an impeccable grasp Karkat had on quadrants. It was nice to chat with her, the two of them, even if they spent a lot of time talking about Rose and a lot of time _not _talking about Dave. Although, Karkat had to admit, the insight on redrom with a human was very enlightening. When they agreed to go out, Rose asked that Kanaya not see anyone in the black quadrant. She insisted upon all quadrants first, but after a long discussion about the cultural and individual importance of such relationships, agreed to compromise by limiting it to the two concupiscent quadrants. Humans were, apparently, monogamous.

Weird.

It was an illuminating conversation, though the good feelings went away somewhat when Karkat returned to his block to find Dave's clothes on the floor next to the recuperacoon. Considering that he'd said he as going to explore some of the further parts of the meteor compound with Terezi and Vriska, Karkat was understandably worried. He didn't see blood or used weapons anywhere but he wasn't satisfied until he looked over the lip of the coon to find that Dave was not, in fact, bleeding out or drowning or dying as humans so easily did.

He was still concerned, simply for a different reason. It was odd that Dave was choosing to sleep in the middle of the day.

Pushing his sleeves up, Karkat reached into the sopor and fished Dave out as he had many times before. Of course, the human struggled against him. It wasn't surprising. Trolls did it too, assuming that they weren't aggressive enough to simply bite off the fingers of anyone foolish enough to try and wake them.

Once Dave was out, he blinked hard and wiped the sopor out of his face. It didn't do a whole lot of good, considering that every inch of him was sticky and lime-green, but Dave didn't seem bothered by the clumping hair hanging in his face or the slime clinging to him. "Woah, where's the fire, Karkat? Can't a guy get his beauty sleep? Not that I need it. I mean, have you _seen_ this face? Practically a work of art. The kinda shit some pompous art history professor would stare at, nod once, and agree should immediately be hung in a museum for all to see and marvel at just how fucking sexy—"

He was cut off when Karkat pressed a finger over his lips. It was a challenge to resist the urge to shush him but he managed to hold himself back, barely. "Your supposed sexiness isn't what's up for debate right now, Dave. I want to know why you're sleeping in the middle of the goddamn day. If you wanted to nap, that's what you've got your human bed for. Hell, that's why even trolls without moirails keep a pile shoved in a storageblock somewhere. You know why? Because it's a goddamn hassle. Look at my flooring, Dave. All this uniform grey, meticulously clean and looked after, and then there's your puddle of sticky green shame. Not only that, but sopor is a mind-altering substance. You _can_ overdose on this shit, Dave. Trolls more than double your size have managed before, either by eating the shit or refusing to take a break. It's normal and encouraged to sleep on your own every once and a while." He paused to take a breath. Before Dave could cut in, he was immediately continuing with, "So, what happened? Why aren't you with Vriska and Terezi?"

Dave sort of stared for a moment, like he didn't understand what was being asked of him. Considering all that Karkat had said, he gave Dave a minute to catch up.

Eventually, the human sighed. With his shades off, it was easy to spot the way his eyes were darting around. Unable to stay focused on any one object but straying far away from Karkat. "Nothing happened, alright? I… messaged Terezi and told her that I changed my mind about tagging along. She's probably still out with Vriska in those creepy-ass meteor rooms just having a grand old time."

Karkat blinked. He tilted his head to the side and crossed his arms, squinting at Dave the way he tended to do when he was thinking hard. "If nothing unpleasant happened…" he began slowly, "then why are you choosing to sleep? You haven't seen Terezi in almost a perigee, Dave. You don't really see much of anyone anymore, aside from me." He frowned, trying and failing not to show his concern. "Are you…? I mean, Dave, is everything alright?"

He went to put a hand on Dave's shoulder, willing to forgive the bare skin and green slime, but was surprised when the human turned away at the last second and Karkat's hand caught on nothing but empty air. His lips parted ever-so-slightly. Dave hadn't so blatantly avoided his touch since those first few perigees on the meteor together.

"I'm fine," Dave huffed as he rolled his eyes. "Look, just because I don't feel like putting up with Terezi's cackling bullshit or Vriska's "holier-than-thou" default doesn't mean that anything's wrong. All I did was take a nap. What's the big deal?"

It wasn't a big deal. Or, well, it shouldn't have been. But Karkat couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong. Dave was being weirdly defensive. Normally, if he didn't want to talk, he would say that or keep quiet. Besides, he got along with Vriska pretty well. They weren't super close, of course, but Dave didn't challenge her or let himself get riled up the way that Karkat did. Once Vriska accepted that she couldn't fuck with Dave, her attitude toward him became a lot more mellow. And Terezi, as much as she liked her moirail, still enjoyed hanging out with others. He had thought that Dave liked seeing the both of them, too.

Knowing that he wasn't going to get anywhere with Dave's current mood, Karkat sighed. "I guess I overreacted," he admitted. "Look, the next time you want to nap, can you curl up on your human sleep mat or the couch or some shit? I am serious about overusing the sopor. I have no idea what the human threshold for an overdose is."

"So?" Dave waved a hand dismissively, surprising Karkat. "Dude, I'm God Tier anyway. If I choke on slime and suffocate to death like a retard I'll come back in a few minutes. And then we'll know the limit for overdoses for sure. It really seems like you're worrying over nothing. You've been sleeping in slime your whole life and you're fine. All I'm trying to do is sleep well. What's the big deal?"

And… yeah, those were actually valid points. Karkat still didn't like the idea but he wasn't sure how he could refute that. Thankfully, Dave seemed to be giving him time to think about what he wanted to say. After another moment, Karkat settled on, "I don't want to have to watch you die over something that's easily avoidable. I'm not saying that sleeping well isn't important, but… goddamn, Dave, if you can only sleep properly in sopor maybe you should… talk to me about it. Even trolls aren't completely dependent on that shit to keep away the dayterrors."

There was a moment where Karkat thought that Dave was going to agree to cool it with the sopor and open up a little. Then his eyes narrowed and Karkat felt his digestion bladder drop into his knees. "What happened to me "opening up" when I was ready? I thought you said that I didn't have to talk if I don't want to." He snorted. "Guess that was a fucking lie, huh?"

Karkat started, again reaching to touch Dave. What was happening? Why had their conversation suddenly gone so poorly? "What? No! You're twisting my fucking words! I won't—"

He cut himself off when Dave stepped neatly around him. Still dripping sopor and wearing only his boxers, the human grabbed his shades and swept out of Karkat's block without another word.

He winced at the sound of the door slamming shut behind Dave but made no move to go after his friend. Whatever it was that he didn't want to tell Karkat about, it was clearly serious. As awful as he felt about pushing Dave away, maybe some time apart would help. It was obvious that he wasn't in any mood to be around other people.

No matter how much Karkat wished he could help, he really had no choice if Dave didn't want him to. He would have to wait and see what the human wanted to do. He wasn't going to go after Dave and shove his pale feelings in the poor guy's face when he had a lot to think about. That would overcomplicate things and completely defeat the point of going after Dave in the first place.

After a moment of thought, Karkat gave in and grabbed his husktop. He set on a movie that had absolutely nothing to do with moirallegiance and tried to be invested. Of course, then it became entirely about a vacillating matespritship and Karkat had to turn it off because he couldn't stop seeing the main redrom interest as Dave.

Fuck. He was a mess.

Movies off, Karkat collapsed in his pile, a comfortable mess of Gamzee's old bicycle horns and pillows and blankets. He wasn't sure why Dave was always so weirded out by the hard objects Karkat shoved into the pile, but the blankets were sort of nice. It made him feel better to not have a pile made _completely _out of things he related to Gamzee. He might have been pale for that jackoff at once point but, not only would such a moirallegiance be doomed to failure, but he was no longer even the slightest bit interested.

Curling up on the pile, Karkat scowled at the door to his block as if that might make Dave come back in. It didn't, of course. After a few minutes of deafening silence and upset, his glower relaxed and turned remorse. Maybe it wasn't Dave's fault at all. Maybe Karkat was the one who kept fucking everything up. He tried to help his friend by introducing him to the blissfully drugged sleep that came with sopor and then he had the nerve to try and yank it away from Dave when it became clear that it was working and actually helping. He had to look like the world's biggest asshat. No wonder Dave was so frustrated with him. Karkat would be upset, too. As a direct parallel, if Kanaya stopped sharing the sopor she alchemized with the other trolls on the meteor, he would be deeply hurt and pissed off. Was that how Dave saw it too? That by wanting him to sleep without sopor every now and then, Karkat _wanted _him to have dayterrors?

He was such a hopeless fucking buffoon. Dave was right to storm out. Clearly, Karkat was being unreasonable as hell.

A few hours must have passed before there was a knock on the door of his block. Karkat wouldn't know — he was too busy staring at the ceiling and doing his best not to think of _anything _to pay attention to the time. He rolled over when he heard someone trying to get his attention, though. A part of him hoped that it was Dave but, _fuck_, what would Karkat even say to him? He could apologize but would Dave even want to hear it? He wasn't in the mood to deal with any of his other friends, though he doubted that they would be asking about Dave. Not when he was so adamantly against telling anyone what was wrong. None of their friends would know that anything was off unless either Karkat or Dave told them. And that wasn't something that either of them enjoyed doing.

"Coming!" Karkat snapped when there was a second, much harder knock. He had been hoping that whoever it was would fuck off, but no such luck. The universe was constantly conspiring against him. He dragged himself out of the pile, setting off an ungodly amount of honking as he did so, and went to the door. He opened it expecting to tell one of his friends to fuck off, but the words died on his lips as he saw who was standing there. "Dave! I, um…" He bit his lip to stop himself from babbling. "I… what are you doing back here? I thought you wanted to be alone."

He must have stopped by an ablution at some point in the last few hours because Dave was clean of any hint of green. It was unusual to see him wearing something besides his God Tier outfit, as it had become something of Dave's default, but with those red pajamas still on Karkat's floor, the human was wearing his old usual of the record-scratch shirt and jeans. With his shades on, it was hard to tell how Dave was feeling, but Karkat hoped that he wasn't mad.

"I do," Dave said, voice tight. Karkat winced. Yeah, he still wasn't forgiven. He started to apologize, stamping out the pathetic desire to ask if they were still friends, when Dave's expression softened. "I came back for my God Tier clothes. I mean, I could've used my time powers to bring them to me but… then I started thinking and I wanted to, um, apologize I guess. Not for anything I said, because I still think I'm one-hundred percent right, as usual, just— Just for being a jerk about it. It's not like you were trying to be an asshole, you were worried like any best bro would be, and…" He sighed heavily. "...and I shouldn't've gotten pissy at you for something as pure and innocent as that. If it'll make you feel better, I'll stop getting into your coon whenever I wanna nap."

Karkat's shoulders sagged in relief. Fuck, that went so much better than he thought it would. He had barely had to say anything at all. "Thank you, Dave," he said with a hesitant smile. "I'm sorry, too. For overreacting and pushing you to talk to me. You don't… I mean, everyone has bad days. I shouldn't have assumed that because you weren't happy there had to be a problem."

There was a flicker of surprise on Dave's face, but then he chuckled and shook his head. "Wow. That makes a lot of fucking sense. I guess you can be really reasonable and wise when you're not all shouty and shit, huh?" He teased.

Before Karkat could reply, Dave held out his hand and it began to glow red as a faint outline of his aspect symbol appeared in the air in front of him. Karkat recoiled from the sudden bright light but, once it died down, he opened his eyes to find Dave in his God Tier outfit and the pile of clothes near his recuperacoon gone. There were still sopor stains all over the place, but whatever. Those were normal features of a troll's block, anyway. They could be dealt with later.

It looked like Dave was winding up to spew another torrent of bullshit, so Karkat went ahead and cut him off. "You said that you wanted to be alone, right?" He asked. When Dave nodded, he continued with, "I'm not going to insist that you have to come to me, but you can. And I did mean what I said a few wipes ago, about how you can use my coon to sleep whenever. That still applies. I mean, uh, if you want to show up here when you normally go to be I'm not going to fucking make you leave or some stupid shit like that." Karkat paused, then admitted, "You're still my best friend, Dave."

The human snorted, nudging Karkat with his elbow. At least they were touching again. That was a good sign, right? "And you're mine, Karcrab. I'm gonna chill in my room for now, though. Maybe mix some raps or fuck around with the alchemizer until I can figure out how to get myself a camera and film. But, uh, I'll see you tonight, yeah?"

He had started to levitate, which meant that Dave was getting ready to leave. Karkat really didn't want him to go, but the way he said they would see each other later… Why did he have to make it sound like a date? Because he wished that it was. Dave was going to be the death of him. "Yeah," Karkat echoed. "See you."

Thankfully, Dave did show up later to go to sleep. Karkat had been about to climb into his recuperacoon when Dave appeared in his room. Fucking obnoxious God Tier asshole. Despite Karkat's bitching, he obviously let Dave get into the sopor. He wasn't sure if they were going to cuddle or not with things still a little tense between them, but it was a bigger relief than it should have been for Karkat to climb in after Dave and have the human wrap him in a tight embrace. Everything was fine. They were still friends.

There was no reason to panic.


	3. i'm so bad, at goodbyes

It seemed like the crisis had been neatly avoided. Most days, Dave didn't want to do anything in particular, but he stuck by Karkat's side during their normal activities together and hung out with the others occasionally. When Karkat wanted to see Kanaya, Dave was with Rose, or if Karkat wanted to be alone, he would pester Dave until he got in contact with Terezi. They didn't do group hangouts only because, despite there being literally nothing on the meteor to do, everyone in their friend circle was incapable of having an empty schedule at the same time. But Vriska and Rose would sometimes get together to discuss "Light player things," so Karkat had a messaging system set up with Kanaya to let him know when those private meet-ups were so that he knew he could have time alone with Kanaya or Terezi or force Dave into socializing.

For some reason, he wasn't too keen on talking to others anymore. But he still did it, so long as Karkat needled him about it for long enough.

Sleeping in his coon with Dave had helped more than Karkat had expected it to. Sure, the sopor kept away the dayterrors, but that didn't mean that it helped Karkat stay asleep or feel energized when he woke up. Something about having Dave sleeping with him was comforting. And it wasn't entirely a quadrant thing, which was a refreshing change of pace.

It was about two perigees after Karkat first introduced Dave to sopor when there was the first little inkling that something was wrong. He had been hanging in Terezi's block and doing some roleplaying with her scalemates. Apparently, she had had a little pale spat with Vriska and was adamant that it wasn't her fault. She didn't tell Karkat what had happened (throughout all of their quadrant vacillations in the past, pale had not been one that either of them was interested in, and Terezi wasn't big on infidelity) but she refused to apologize or feel guilty. Naturally, she brought in Karkat for a good-old-fashioned courtroom roleplay to take her mind off of things until Vriska was ready to admit that she was wrong.

The trial was brutal. Doctor Honeytongue, a once-trusted member of Terezi's forensics team, had been accused of tampering with court evidence for sweeps. If he was guilty, it would mean that dozens of executions had been carried out against possibly innocent scalemates. Terezi was merciless in her pursuit of the truth. They were in the middle of a short recess while the prosecution prepared their final statement for His Honorable Tyranny, who was being portrayed by Karkat because Terezi had, sadly, run out of red chalk. A disgraceful development, to be sure.

It was during their recess that Karkat's palmhusk vibrated in his pocket. He considered ignoring it, not wanting to stop a conversation whenever Terezi decided to continue the trial. A glance over at her showed that she was ranting and raving with her team of prosecutors, so he left her to it and decided to make it quick. Terezi would probably be a while, anyway.

**tentacleTherapist [TT] began pestering carcinoGeneticist [CG]**

**TT: Karkat, if you are not otherwise occupied, I would like to pick your "thinkpan" for some information regarding Dave.  
CG: WOW, SHIT, YOU'RE NOT EVEN PULLING ANY PUNCHES.  
CG: THERE WAS NO EASING INTO THAT, LALONDE. NO NEAT SEGWAY TO CATCH ME UNAWARES.  
CG: IT'S RIGHT OUT OF THE GATE WITH YOUR USUAL BRAND OF BULLSHIT. OR, REMARKABLY, *UN*USUAL IN THIS CASE.  
CG: WHAT A GODDAMN TURN OF EVENTS. IT'S PRETTY TWISTED IN THIS CHAT ROOM RIGHT NOW.  
TT: While I would ordinarily entertain you with a passive-aggressive back and forth for an hour or two before eventually getting useful information, I'm afraid that's not on the agenda today.  
TT: This is serious.  
CG: FINE, FUCK.  
CG: WHAT IS IT? WHAT'S SO GODDAMN IMPORTANT THAT YOU HAVE TO SHOVE YOUR DEMANDS DOWN MY SQUEAK PIPETTE WITH ALL THE TACT AND GRACE OF A LOWBLOOD DEALING WITH THEIR FIRST EXPERIENCE OF MATING FONDNESS?  
TT: Do you know where Dave is?  
CG: SERIOUSLY? *THAT'S* WHAT HAS YOU WORKED UP?  
TT: Do you know or not?  
CG: IS THIS SOME KIND OF TRICK? HE TOLD ME THAT HE WAS GOING TO BE HANGING OUT WITH YOU TODAY. IF ANYONE, *YOU* SHOULD KNOW WHERE HE IS.  
TT: I suspected as much.  
TT: I asked Dave if he would like to "get together" and "hang" like "old bros" but he told me that he was going to be busy doing something with you.  
TT: I thought nothing of it at first, but Vriska is here in Kanaya's room with me and complaining about something that happened with Terezi. What struck me as interesting was that she mentioned running into you on her way here and that you said you were going to Terezi's room. Alone.  
CG: YES, I REMEMBER. THAT WAS CERTAINLY A CONVERSATION THAT WE DID HAVE. AN UNPLEASANT, EYE-GOUGINGLY UNBEARABLE CONVERSATION, BUT A CONVERSATION NONETHELESS.  
TT: Do you see where I was going by asking you about Dave?  
CG: YOU'RE TELLING ME THAT HE'S NOT WITH YOU OR WITH ME, DESPITE WHAT HE TOLD BOTH OF US.  
CG: I UNDERSTAND THAT, BUT I DON'T THINK IT'S A BIG DEAL. HE PROBABLY WANTED TO BE ALONE. DO YOU NEED TO SEE HIM RIGHT THIS VERY INSTANT?  
TT: Karkat.  
TT: I haven't seen Dave in months.  
CG: OH.  
CG: BUT  
CG: HE TOLD ME THAT HE'S BEEN SEEING YOU REGULARLY. AND TEREZI, TOO. WHENEVER I'M NOT AVAILABLE TO HANG OUT WITH.  
TT: I just asked Vriska. She hasn't seen Dave anywhere near Terezi in a long time.  
CG: WELL  
CG: FUCK.  
CG: UH, YEAH, I'LL GO FIND HIM. AND I'LL ASK HIM ABOUT WHATEVER'S GOING ON.  
TT: Good luck. Tell me what he says when you find him.  
CG: YEAH, ALRIGHT.  
TT: And Karkat?  
CG: WHAT?  
TT: Regardless of what Dave says, you're the one he's most apt to talk about himself with. Even when he doesn't want to, you need to push.  
TT: Dave never gives anything up willingly. If you wait for him to be ready, he never will be. It's not a tangible goal when he actively avoids ever being "ready" to open up.  
TT: But he needs it. And I think that you're the best candidate to do a good job of it.  
CG: I**  
**CG: OKAY.**  
**CG: I'LL KEEP THAT IN MIND.**

**carcinoGeneticist [CG] ceased trolling tentacleTherapist [TT]**

That was a lot to take in. Karkat stared at his palmhusk for another minute without moving, soaking in the last bit of what Rose had told him. So she really hadn't seen Dave in perigees? All of those times he had told Karkat who he was going to say or something cool he had done with one of their friends… Those were all lies. They had to be. He couldn't think of any reason why Rose would have told him that she hadn't seen Dave in months otherwise.

Then again, he also couldn't think of an explanation for why Dave had lied about seeing everyone. If it was a joke, it wasn't very funny.

"I have to go, Terezi," he said without looking at her as he shoved his palmhusk into his pocket. "His Honorable Tyranny declares the defendant guilty and pushes him accordingly by eating him alive. Case closed."

She protested his leaving but Karkat was no longer listening. He moved on autopilot, finding Dave's block on instinct. They had spent enough time fucking around in there that Karkat could probably find his way blindfolded. And for once, the thought didn't even make him think about how pale that was. He had far more important things to think about.

Once there, Karkat didn't even bother knocking. He shoved open the door to Dave's block and was met with a whole lot of absolutely nothing. No one was there. The human bed was made and untouched, as it had been for quite a while. Dave's turntables were set up on a desk but the thin layer of dust on top of them said that they hadn't been used in quite a while. Karkat looked underneath and behind everything that could reasonably fit a person, but his efforts were for naught. He had known from his first glance at the empty block that Dave wasn't going to be there.

He rocked back on his heels and dragged a hand through his hair with a frustrated sigh. Fuck. What was going on? If Dave wasn't in his block, he wasn't with Karkat, and he wasn't with Rose or any of their other friends… Where could he be?

The only other place Karkat could think to check was his own block. It didn't make much sense to him, but as far as he knew, Dave had no secret alcove or place that he liked to go to. He mostly hung around with Karkat or in one of their blocks. What else was there to do on the meteor, anyway?

He turned and left Dave's block, hurrying to his own. Even if Dave wasn't there, Karkat could use familiar pacing grounds to help him think. Fuck. Fuck, he was such an awful friend.

Two transportilizers later and Karkat finally stumbled to a stop outside the door of his block. He fumbled with opening it for a moment, his bloodpusher pounding so hard that it hurt, before finally bursting into the block beyond with a triumphant shout.

A triumph that was, apparently, correctly placed. Because Dave was there, upside-down on Karkat's pile and frowning thoughtfully at one of his Alternian romance novels. The sight was so bizarre that Karkat had to do a double-take. Despite the loud noises he had made in getting the door open, Dave seemed completely unbothered. With his shades on, it was hard to tell if he had even bothered to glance at Karkat when he came in.

The silence was dragged out for several seconds and broken only when Dave licked his thumb and gently turned the page of the novel he was reading, appropriately titled _In Which a Female Highblood With Lofty Expectations for a Matespritship Sets Off to Find the Perfect Partner Only to Have Her Thoughts and Flushed Feelings Swayed by a Male Lowblood Working a Menial Desk Job Far Beneath Her Station_. As far as Alternian romance went, the story was fairly cut-and-dry. Dave gave a nod of the head. "'Sup, Katkar. Did TZ and Vriska kiss and makeup that fast? I don't blame you for high-tailing it as fast as your little legs can carry you. I'd hate to be around when they got bogged-down into their platonic make outs, too."

Karkat said nothing, stunned. If something was wrong, then Dave was giving no indication of it. He looked like he was earnestly reading a book.

Slowly, he shut the door behind him and crept further into his block. Funny. Dave smelled different. Normally, Karkat liked the way that the human smelled, but it was off. It was tinged too strongly with salt. "Yeah," he agreed with an absent-minded nod. "I'd rather stimulate my seed flap with a colony of angry marchbugs than be around Vriska any longer than necessary." When that got Dave to crack a smile, Karkat stepped closer and stopped only another two steps from his pile. "So, how were things with Rose? I didn't think you would be getting away from her therapy roleplay shit anytime soon."

For a split-second, Dave froze. Had Karkat not been looking for it, he would have missed it. His friend just as quickly shrugged and went back to pretending to be reading. "Oh, y'know. It was her usual brand of hentai mind tricks. Doubt she even knows I'm gone. I split as soon as she brought up my "daddy issues" for, like, the fifteenth time this week." He huffed out a laugh without feeling.

He was lying. Karkat was tempted to call Dave out on it, to show him the conversation he'd had with Rose and demand an explanation, but…

But Karkat had seen plenty of cornered animals in his time. He didn't want to give Dave a reason to lash out. Or, worse, to close up. Then Karkat would never understand what was going through his head.

So, instead, Karkat nodded. "Whatever. If you're going to insist on laying in my pile, at least move over so that I can get comfortable too." He shooed Dave off to one side of the horn pile, collapsing down in the freed-up spot with an accompanying sound effect of countless horns honking. He ignored any implications of laying in a pile with his sort-of pale crush, fishing out his palmhusk and adjusting himself so that Dave couldn't see the screen before he began typing out a message.

**carcinoGeneticist [CG] began trolling tentacleTherapist [TT]**

**CG: ALRIGHT, CRISIS AVERTED. I FOUND DAVE.  
TT: Did you ask him for the reasoning behind his apparent self-imposed exile?  
CG: NO. HE TOLD ME THAT HE GOT DONE CHATTING WITH YOU AND NOW HE'S IN MY BLOCK, READING ONE OF MY ROMANCE NOVELS.  
CG: WHATEVER IS GOING ON WITH HIM, HE DOESN'T WANT ANYONE TO KNOW. I DOUBT HE'LL TELL ME WILLINGLY, EVEN IF I SMACK HIM IN THE FACE WITH PROOF OF HIS FILTHY LIES.  
TT: Ah. I see.  
TT: So we're in this for the long haul.  
CG: IT LOOKS TO BE THAT WAY, YES.  
TT: I was going to message him, but I suppose that now I won't bother. I don't think he'll take too kindly to it if he's really going this far to avoid everyone.  
TT: Everyone except you, apparently.  
CG: I DON'T KNOW IF THAT'S PERSONAL CHOICE OR NOT.  
CG: WE HAVE TO SEE EACH OTHER DAILY. HE SLEEPS IN MY RECUPERACOON WITH ME.  
TT: Really? Dave doesn't mind sleeping in sopor?  
CG: NO. HE SEEMS TO REALLY ENJOY IT. MORE THAN I DO, EVEN.  
TT: Interesting.  
TT: Well, I won't push for now. But you will keep me posted on whatever is going on with him, won't you?  
CG: OF COURSE.  
TT: Thank you.**

**carcinoGeneticist [CG] ceased trolling tentacleTherapist [TT]**

As much as it pained Karkat to consider the possibility… what if Dave really didn't want to be around him? What if they were only talking and hanging out so frequently because Dave was afraid of losing access to Karkat's recuperacoon if he didn't maintain a strong friendship?

The thought hurt. It really did. Dave had said that they were best friends, but was that a lie? Did he like Karkat in the slightest or was he pretending the entire meteor trip so far? Had Dave not been there, Karkat might have cried. Or, if he was a fucking wimp, he might have. But Karkat Vantas was sick of his ugly, red-tinted mutantblood tears and he was tired of being such a useless piece of shit.

If Dave was going to insist on doing things the hard way, then fine. The hard way it was.

Over the next few wipes, Karkat watched. And the more he watched, the more he saw. In fact, it was embarrassing that he hadn't noticed anything off about Dave before.

He was lethargic, all the time. Not tired, exactly. It was more like, no matter what they did, no matter how much Dave claimed to be interested, no matter how much he liked a certain activity, he could barely muster up any energy. He barely floated more than a few inches off the ground at any given time. He lazed about on everything from the floor to Karkat's pile to leaning against a counter. He spoke, both in person and over messages, with shorter and shorter sentences. Those once winding metaphors he had so long hailed as the pinnacle achievement of irony were becoming almost nonexistent.

Most worrisome of all, Dave seemed to always have a faint smile on his face and he wouldn't stop twitching. His fingers jerked for no reason, he would have to bounce his feet while sitting, his head bobbed even when there was no music playing. But no matter how energetic he seemed, it was almost never reflected in how he held himself, shuffling from point A to point B like he could have been on fire and still wouldn't have quickened his pace. It was when Karkat realized, with a jolt, that he hadn't seen Dave's eyes since that day he found the human napping in his recuperacoon, that Karkat's worst fears were cemented. They had been suspicions at first, nothing more than subconscious little nudges that he desperately wanted to believe weren't true, but Karkat couldn't ignore it any longer.

Because he had seen all of those symptoms before. In Gamzee, after the Game started and his already unhealthy dependency upon sopor had soared.

He didn't tell Rose what he was thinking. At least, not immediately. He needed to confirm it. If he was wrong, there was no sense in getting Rose worked up over her brother for nothing. And if Karkat was right, well…

He would worry about that when (or if) he got that far.

Getting his confirmation wasn't difficult at all. Dave, despite keeping up the pretense of hanging out with other people on the rare instances Karkat trusted himself to be away from the human, was still around him a lot. They still had movie nights more often than not, usually right before they got into the recuperacoon for bed.

Karkat had started diluting the sopor a wipe ago but Dave didn't need to know that.

It was when they were finishing up a movie, the human wedding scene that Karkat knew after countless watchings meant they were about to see the credits, that he suddenly sat up and turned to Dave. Without a word, he reached up and yanked his friend's shades off.

He only saw Dave's eyes for a second, as they were quickly snapped shut with an impudent cry of "Karkat, what the fuck?" but that was enough. He forgot how to breathe.

Dave's irises were still that inhuman, blood-red but his sclera wasn't the white that humans should have had. They were tinted green. Lime green. Sopor green, with deep bags ringing his eyes and veins far more pronounced than they should have been.

When Dave yanked his shades out of Karkat's hands and crammed them back onto his face, the troll made no move to stop him. He was trying to remember how to speak. That wasn't normal. Even before he started sharing with Dave, Karkat was so careful with the sopor levels in his recuperacoon. He didn't want to end up like Gamzee, after all. Nothing that he gave Dave should have been concentrated enough to cause obvious physical contamination. Unless…

"You've been taking from my sopor supply," Karkat managed. He knew by the way Dave stared at him that he was right and, suddenly, he was furious. He was on his feet then, grabbing Dave by the front of his God Tier outfit and yanking him close. "You've been fucking taking from my goddamn sopor supply! Have you been eating it? Rubbing your depraved, naked body in it for shits and giggles whenever you're alone in your block? God, you humans are so fucking sick that I wouldn't be surprised if you told me you were snorting it! Oh, wait, yes I would! Because you haven't told me anything truthful in perigees!"

He wasn't sure if he wanted to cry or scream or both. Dave had no such reservations. His expression of shock turned cold and he reached up, grabbing both of Karkat's wrists in a grip hard enough to make the troll wince. When he let go and tried to pull away, Dave only tightened his hold.

"You don't know what the fuck you're talking about," Dave spat with venom in his voice. "You're so full of shit, Karkat. You want me to be happy, but only if it's under certain conditions that you've already pre-approved of. I finally figured out something that gives my shitty, empty life something to look forward to and you wanna take it away because you think you care. You think I give a single fuck what you want." He drew Karkat closer, so near that he could see the outline of Dave's eyes behind his shades. The hold in Karkat's wrists grew crushing and the troll cried out. Had he been able to reach for his sylladex, Dave would have gotten a sickle in his gut for that. "Well, maybe I'm tired of what you and everyone else want from me. Maybe I wanna do what I want for once. And maybe I like it. Maybe I'll start taking, if you don't feel like giving."

Karkat wasn't proud of the noise he made — caught somewhere between a gasp and a whimper. He had never been scared of Dave before but he found himself involuntarily shrinking back. "What are you saying, Dave?" He whispered, lightheaded.

Something must have snapped him out of it because just as suddenly as he'd grown furious, Dave's expression crumbled. His hold on Karkat fell away and, standing there, he looked like the most pitiful thing in existence. "I need to go," Dave muttered. He touched a hand to his head with a wince. "This was a mistake. I should've known that I wouldn't be able to keep this up. You're way too fucking smart for that."

He didn't use the door. Even as Karkat was trying to stop him, Dave flicked his wrists, summoned his turntables, and was gone in a flash of red.

In his wake, Karkat didn't feel all that smart. He felt pretty goddamn stupid.

He didn't let himself mope around about it, though. Before Karkat even knew what he was going to do, he had his palmhusk in his hand and was pounding out a message faster than he ever had before.

**carcinoGeneticist [CG] began trolling tentacleTherapist [TT]**

**CG: FUCK.  
CG: FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK  
CG: FUCK THIS IS BAD, THIS IS REALLY GODDAMN BAD  
CG: I FIGURED OUT WHAT'S WRONG WITH DAVE.  
CG: HE'S ADDICTED TO SOPOR AND PROBABLY HAS BEEN FOR AT LEAST A PERIGEE NOW.  
CG: PROBABLY EVEN LONGER, GODDAMN. IT'S NOT LIKE I WOULD HAVE NOTICED, I'M SUCH A MONUMENTALLY USELESS AND AWFUL FRIEND. THIS IS ALL MY FAULT. I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN.  
TT: Beating yourself up over it isn't going to change anything, Karkat. What's done is done.  
TT: We can play the blame game once we've fixed the problem.  
TT: You know more about the effects of sopor than I do. What should we do?  
CG: WE NEED TO GET DAVE OUT OF HIS ROOM AND CLEAN OUT ANY AND ALL SOPOR HE MANAGED TO TAKE FROM ME. THE SOONER, THE BETTER. HE CAN'T BE ALLOWED TO HAVE THAT SHIT EVER AGAIN.  
CG: IT DOESN'T HAVE A GOOD EFFECT ON HIM, ROSE. SURE, HE CAN SLEEP WELL, BUT THE WAY HE ASKS  
CG: HE'S NOT DAVE.  
TT: Understood. I'll see what I can do.**

**tentacleTherapist [TT] ceased pestering carcinoGeneticist [CG]**

Dave locked himself in his block and didn't leave for several days. As worried as Karkat was, Rose told him to be patient. He would exhaust the meager amount of sopor he had saved up and would come to Karkat himself to get his next fix.

The way she described it, as if Dave was some random drug addict, made him sick. But he knew that she was right. Her abilities as a Seer meant that she knew exactly what would happen, so Karkat trusted her. Once he ran down his own sopor supply, there would be nothing left for them to clear out, and they could stage an intervention for him. Karkat doubted that it would help, but Rose insisted, and it wasn't as though anyone else knew what to do.

On Alternia, drugs and intoxicants weren't monitored they way Rose explained they were on Earth. It didn't really matter. Only highbloods could afford to waste money on such luxuries and, as far as their society cared, they had the hatchright to kill themselves by overdosing if they so wanted to. No one was going to tell a highblood what they were allowed to do.

Sure enough, exactly three days later, there was a soft knock on his door. Karkat swung it open without hesitation and wasn't surprised to see Dave standing in the threshold, staring at the ground and looking ashamed of himself. His chest squeezed with pity but Karkat did nothing. He didn't know yet if Dave was being genuine or only acting so that Karkat would give him what he wanted.

Or else Dave would "take it," as he had said himself. Whatever that was supposed to mean, Karkat wasn't sure that he wanted to know.

"You're shaking," Karkat remarked clinically. It was a struggle to keep himself calm.

As tired as Dave had looked before, he looked almost dead. His pale skin looked sickly and taut, like it was being pulled too tight over Dave's skeleton. His hair had lost its carefully-styled luster and didn't look like Dave had bothered to brush it in days. He had a thin ring of dried sopor circling his lips and the sight made Karkat grimace.

He wasn't trying to be funny but Dave laughed anyway. He stopped when his entire body shuddered like he was freezing cold. His teeth were chattering and he was shaking. "Yeah. That— That happens in humans when they go through withdrawal, I think. It's not like I've ever done this before." He shook his head. Then, looking pained, he finally managed to lift his head to meet Karkat's gaze. "Look, I'm sorry about before. I—"

"Dave." Karkat cut him off. He stepped forward, setting his hands on the human's shoulders, and tried to ignore the way that Dave recoiled from his touch as though burned. "Stop it. Please. Look, I… I'm glad that you're admitting to having a problem with sopor but I'm not going to give you any more. Ever again."

The mask that Dave was wearing slipped, but only barely. His eyebrows drew together and his nostrils flared as he let out an unhappy huff. He hadn't even twitched but, suddenly, Karkat wanted to remove his hands and put as much distance between them as possible. The way that Dave was looking at him, even with those damn shades on, made Karkat feel uncomfortably vulnerable.

"Yeah?" Dave tilted his head to the side. He was still trembling but that didn't keep Karkat from flinching at the sound of his voice. It reaffirmed what he had said to Rose a few days prior: _that wasn't Dave_. "And just what do you think you can do to stop me, Karkat?"

"That's enough." Rose's voice seemed to legitimately startle Dave. His piercing gaze snapped away from Karkat to stare at his sister as she stepped out from around the door frame and into his line of sight. There was a tight frown on her face. Right. Karkat hadn't exactly told her about Dave's behavior the last time that they spoke. He still had faint, human hand-shaped bruises around his wrists, although they were so faded that they were practically impossible to see. "Dave, what are you doing? You know that you're being irrational. You're worrying Karkat." She paused, then said in a soft voice, "You're worrying all of us."

"Us?" Dave echoed, the word heavy on his tongue. He shot Karkat a piercing glare. "You told Rose? And I'm guessing all of the other chucklefucks on the meteor know, too. So much for caring about me and respecting me, huh? If you're willing to tell anyone what should've been private between us."

Karkat turned red, feeling red-hot shame creeping up his neck and face. He had an apology on the tip of his tongue when he felt Rose's delicate fingers curl around his shoulder. She pulled him back with a surprising amount of strength, forcing his hands away from Dave and replacing his position standing in front of the human.

"I said that's enough," she said forcefully. "You're using emotional manipulation to get what you want and I'd wager that you've been doing it for a while, haven't you, Dave? Even if you didn't realize it at first." Rose crossed her arms. "Am I wrong?"

All she got for her efforts was a scoff. "Whatever, Rose. Get the fuck out of my way," Dave snapped. "This isn't a problem. Me and Karkat had a good thing going, fucking around all day. So what if I was taking a little more slime than I should've? There's, like, seven of us on this meteor. What's it matter how I choose to spend all of my fucking free time? It's not like I'm hurting anyone."

He made a move to step around Rose but she stopped him by placing a hand on his chest, a severe set to her eyes. "You're hurting Karkat," she retorted.

For the first time, that seemed to have an effect. Dave paused, face creasing with confusion as he shot Karkat a look over Rose's shoulder. "What? No, I wouldn't…" He shook his head and winced. "I'm not hurting Karkat. I'd never want to do that. We were doing fine before you shoved yourself in where you aren't wanted."

Until then, the lights in Karkat's block had been turned to the lowest setting they could have without being off. Rose reached over and flipped them on bright, causing Karkat to squint, though he refused to ask for them to be turned back down.

The brightness exposed what Dave had missed before, what with his focus on Karkat and Rose combined with the fact that he was wearing shades. The furniture in the middle of Karkat's block had been shoved to the side to make room for chairs, set up in a semicircle. There were seven of them, three left empty for the only people in the block not sitting. The other four held Vriska, Terezi, Kanaya, and The Mayor, of course.

When Rose had said that Dave was worrying all of them, she hadn't been kidding. Out of everyone, Vriska had been the least interested in an intervention, though she hadn't protested. Her expression had been bored when she'd arrived, but at the moment she was wearing a concerned frown. Kanaya looked alarmed and Terezi was almost horrified. Karkat understood — he didn't have a sense of smell anywhere near as finely-tuned as Terezi's and he could still easily smell how Dave's natural scent had been all but smothered in the salty, bitter tang of sopor. That couldn't be a good sign.

Dave's jaw moved up and down soundlessly as he tried to formulate a response. "What…" He looked shaken. "What the fuck is all of this supposed to be?"

"An intervention." Rose set a hand on Dave's wrist, leading him forward without resistance. "And one that, from the look of things, you desperately need. This isn't you, Dave. You have to know that something is wrong here."

The look on Dave's face was somewhere between insulted and betrayed. Karkat wasn't sure if he wanted to shush Dave or put as much distance between them as possible. He couldn't understand why he was suddenly scared of Dave, but… He didn't like being looked at like that. The way that Gamzee used to look at him before locking himself in the deepest reaches of the meteor. Like he was a prize or something fantastic, but only for as long as he was quiet and did what he was supposed to do.

It was hard to explain and difficult to come to terms with. Karkat ignored the thought.

Before Dave could retort, Rose was pushing him down into a seat at the edge of the circle and furthest from the door. He went easily, legs giving out like he'd never had to use them before. She took the seat next to Kanaya even as Vriska huffed and tossed her hair over one shoulder with an uncaring flick.

"I'll say something's wrong!" She exclaimed. "Look at yourself! This is pathetic, even for a human. How are you supposed to be useful in the fight against Lord English if you can barely stand without shaking like a goddamn dying wiggler? I don't give a fuck if you want to take sopor. Hell, Gamzee was on it almost all the time and he still managed to be more useful in the Game than 80% of the rest of the group! But if it's this bad, you're no use to anyone. And especially not yourself," Vriska finished with a disdainful sneer.

To her left, Terezi had finally managed to get a hold of herself and nodded. "Sleeping in sopor is one thing, but…" She sniffed the air, face wrinkling with disgust. "Cool kid, don't take this the wrong way, but you reek. It smells like you've got sopor in your veins instead of that delicious cherry red."

"Dave, whatever has pushed you to do this to yourself, you should know that there are other, better ways to be happy," Kanaya said gently. Rose had set a hand on her knee and the jadeblood ran the tips of her claws over the delicate skin in soft strokes. The sight made Karkat wonder if Dave caught the implication and, if he had, did he immediately think of Karkat the way that the troll had thought of Dave? "We're sorry that we let this go unnoticed for so long, but despite our previous negligence, we're your friends Dave. We want to help you. What you're doing now helps no one." She shook her head sadly.

The Mayor copied the motion and that seemed to be Dave's limit. His face twisted into a sneer and he lurched to his feet, whirling on Karkat. He had never bothered to sit down, though the spot next to Dave on the right had been reserved for him. The way the human looked at him made Karkat glad that he had chosen to remain standing. His fingers twitched for his strife sylladex but didn't pull it out yet.

"Was this awful idea yours, Karkat?" Dave snapped, closing the distance between them in two long strides. He kept his hands to himself which was, frankly, the only thing keeping Karkat from stabbing him and breaking down into tears immediately afterward. "Oh, who am I fucking kidding? Of course it was! Even when you can manage to get people to listen to your nonstop bullshit for longer than five minutes, your plans are always God awful! I mean, "your plan" is the reason we met face to face at all and hasn't that gone just fucking dandy? How's it working out for you so far, Karkat? You feeling more or less useless than usual?"

The jabs made Karkat flinch. He had told Dave his worries, his fears, his regrets, his insecurities… All said willingly and in confidence. He would have preferred that Dave run him through with one of his shitty swords than throw all of that right back in his face.

Kanaya had gotten to her feet, as silently as every other rainbow drinker moved. Her hand twitched, though Karkat couldn't tell if she was reached for her chainsaw or to pap him.

Frankly, neither was preferable.

Karkat took a shaky breath. He absolutely refused to cry. "Dave, please stop. You don't mean any of those hoofbeast shit," he muttered, reaching up. Surprisingly, the human let him, looking taken aback as Karkat set both hands on either side of Dave's face. His gaze darted down to his friend's lips and his mouth went dry as he felt Dave tense and swallow hard. "Please. You're my… best friend."

Whatever Dave had wanted to hear, that apparently wasn't it. He pulled back as though burned, fingers curling into fists like it took a monumental amount of effort not to punch Karkat in the gut for that. Alarmed, the troll took a step back. Wrong choice.

Dave snarled. Instead of using Karkat as a new sword sheath, there was a blur of red as he flashstepped and a sound like bone snapping caused Karkat to whirl around in shock. Even Kanaya had been too caught-off-guard to stop Dave, lipstick poised between her fingers as the others rose to their feet.

With his sword buried into the side of Karkat's recuperacoon, Dave had flung himself over the side. He came back up not a moment later with his hands smeared in green slime, glasses lopsided enough to reveal one eye. He looked even worse than he had a few days before, when Karkat first got a good look. The green of his sclera was more pronounced and his pupils were practically pinpricks, little black dots that were shaking as much as the rest of his body was.

"Where," he managed, chest heaving and voice ragged, "is the fucking sopor?"

Vriska stalked toward him, yanking Dave's sword out from where it was buried in the side of the coon and pressing it uncaringly into his arms. He was too shaken to fight her. "Where do you think, dumbass? You've got an addiction! I hope you're happy because now _aaaaaaaall_ of us have had to forfeit our sopor! Yep, that's right, not a single coon on this meteor has sopor in it. No more leaching off of Karkat's supply! Guess you'll either have to learn to like hanging out with him without being high or tell him to hit the bricks." She turned away from him with a sigh. "Great. Now that that's over, I've got far better things to do. Like watching paint dry." She rolled all eight of her eyes and sauntered out of the room.

Well, it was still more helpful than Karkat had imagined she would be when he had first asked her to attend Rose's intervention. He hadn't expected her to bother even with that much.

The sword clattered to the ground as Dave fell to his knees, quivering and struggling to breathe as he leaned against the side of Karkat's recuperacoon. He made a move forward to comfort the human, only for a hand on his shoulder to hold him back. Karkat was expecting Kanaya, only to be surprised to look over and see Terezi fixing him with a frown. She said nothing, merely shook her head. She didn't take her hand off and Karkat made no move to make her.

He watched quietly as Rose kneeled down next to Dave. She said something to him softly that he didn't bother replying to, other than by leaning forward and wrapping his arms loosely around his sister.

Had Karkat not known any better, he would have sworn that Dave was crying.


	4. i hold my breath, and close my eyes

That should have been the end of it, but the universe was never that kind. To anyone. It wasn't even a full day later that Karkat was roused from his uncomfortable sleep in the horn pile by his palmhusk chiming with an incoming message. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and brushed aside the tinges of a dayterror he had been having to reach for it, squinting against the sudden, harsh brightness to read whatever was so important.

**grimAuxiliatrix [GA] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG]**

**GA: Can You Come To The Alchemizer  
GA: Now  
CG: FUCK, WHY?  
CG: IT'S THE MIDDLE OF WHAT I ASSUME IS THE DAY CYCLE FOR AS LONG AS WE HAVE TO LIVE WITH THE SAME PERPETUAL LIGHT LEVELS ON THIS SHITTY ROCK.  
CG: WHAT'S THE EMERGENCY?  
GA: Its Dave  
CG: I'LL BE RIGHT THERE.**

**carcinoGeneticist [CG] ceased trolling grimAuxiliatrix [GA]**

As promised, Karkat was right there. He made it to the mainblock in record time and, from there, it was just a transportilizer trip and a few hallways to the only alchemizer anyone had bothered to get onto the meteor before their session was rendered pointless.

The sight that awaited him was somehow both shocking and exactly what he had expected. Karkat stood frozen in the doorway, taking in the sopor dripping from the machine and absolutely everywhere in the room. Kanaya was already there, of course, and surveying the mess with a look of distaste. Toward the center of it, Rose was bending over something. Even before she straightened up, Karkat knew what he was going to see but, somehow, his breath still managed to hitch at the sight of Dave lying face-down in the slime and coated in sopor.

He hurried over to Kanaya, trying not to look as strained as he felt. "What the hell happened? Is Dave…?" Karkat didn't finish. He didn't want to say it aloud.

Kanaya understood anyway, giving him a sympathetic look. "Dave is alive. Or, well, alive as one can be while living… like that." She gestured vaguely in his direction, where it looked like Rose was trying to get him to wake up. "I was having trouble sleeping without my coon, you see. Not because of the dayterrors or dream bubbles, but because human mattresses are taking some time to adjust to. Anyway, I came here to alchemize more fabric for a dress I'm sewing and I walked in on Dave unconscious and this mess." She sighed, suddenly looking weary. "This sopor is dried and flaking, Karkat. He has likely been here since our little intervention. I wouldn't be surprised if he came immediately here after we left him alone."

Never in his life had Karkat felt so goddamn useless. And that was saying a lot.

"What do we do?" He hissed, shaking with barely-restrained tears as he stared, horrified, at Dave's limp body. "We can't stop him. He can disappear and reappear at will. We can't break the fucking alchemizer unless we feel like saying goodbye to food and water and other basic essentials. We have no way to keep Dave from doing what he wants."

For once, Kanaya didn't say anything. She didn't try to comfort Karkat or offer any advice. Instead, she put her arms around his shoulders and let him bury his face into her chest and sob. She didn't shush him or pap him — the fingers canting through his hair were bad enough — but it was a close thing. Karkat didn't care how pale she was for him or if it looked like he was flirting or how pathetic he was being. He clutched at the back of Kanaya's shirt and let himself cry.

They were interrupted only when Rose made a stricken sound and turned to them with concern. "We might not have to worry about Dave going anywhere if this means what I think it means." She waved them both over frantically. "Kanaya, get in contact with Terezi. I need her here immediately."

While Kanaya fumbled with her palmhusk, Karkat practically fell flat on his face in his efforts to get to Rose as fast as possible. When he did hit the ground, kicking up sopor in the process, he barely noticed. His aching knees and ruined clothes meant nothing as he shakily cupped Dave's face and cradled the human's head in his lap. If Rose could tell how very non-platonically Karkat was reacting, she said nothing about it.

Karkat didn't even need to ask. Rose pushed Dave's hair away from his ears, shades having been long discarded, and gestured for Karkat to look. He was a bit taken aback to see sopor leaking from Dave's ears, stained streaks of it running down both sides of his neck and matting the hair at the back of his head.

"I wasn't sure at first how Dave could have gotten sopor stains in his ears," Rose began, "unless that's a method of injection that I never heard about in my sheltered, pampered upbringing. But then I noticed, ah, this." She reached over and placed her fingers carefully around Dave's eye, prying the lid open so that Karkat could lean over and see what she was trying to show him.

His eyes had been bloodshot for a while, but it was worse than that. Some of the veins had burst but instead of a mildly unpleasant burst of red in the sclera, as there should have been, Dave had flecks of green speckled in with crimson. His human "tear ducts," because humans were apparently too good for an anguish bladder like every other species on Alternia, were leaking but what was coming out wasn't clear. In fact, it didn't look like it was coming from Dave's tear ducts at all. It looked a lot like his eyes were bleeding sopor.

Silently, Karkat pulled away and sat back on his heels. He ran a hand through Dave's blond hair idly, staring at the sopor-splattered Time symbol on the front of his God Tier outfit. The self-cleaning must not have felt like bothering when Dave was still rolling around in the shit.

"Wow." He let out a shaky breath. "That's… that's really goddamn bad, isn't it?"

Rose made a noise that might have been a laugh if she hadn't sounded on the verge of screaming. "If you're asking me if humans normally leak green from their facial orifices, then the answer is no."

"Nothing is coming out of his mouth," Karkat pointed out. He pushed Dave's jaw open but, no. There was not a hint of green. "Or his nose or any, uh, _lower_ human orifices. What does it mean? You know more about human anatomy than I do." He shot Rose a frown but did his best to be patient. They were siblings, which Karkat had gathered was important in human society. She was probably just as torn up about Dave's current state as Karkat was.

Frustratingly, Rose shook her head. "I have a few theories but none of them are good. I need Terezi here to confirm for me."

Which meant that all they could do was wait. With no symptoms to treat other than unconsciousness (though that was probably for the best) and no idea what the underlying issue was, they had no other option. Karkat hunched over Dave's head, trailing his claws down the human's jaw, neck, and cheeks, murmuring softly to him all the while. Once she finished contacting Terezi, Kanaya settled in between Rose and Karkat. She held her matesprit close and rubbed gentle little circles down the arch of Karkat's spine, as he refused to pull away from Dave for even a moment. It didn't matter that his friend's breath was far too shallow and stank of sopor. Karkat needed to feel those life-giving puffs rasp across his cheek. As long as Dave was still breathing, it would be okay. He wasn't going to let it get any worse. They could pull through.

He straightened up when the door to the block was slammed open. Terezi came whirling in and immediately slipped on the sopor still slicking the floor. The damn shit never stopped being slippery, even after it dried. Its residue was hated unanimously all across Alternia. She was saved from falling flat on her ass by the hand Vriska set on her shoulder, steadying her. Even without her fairy wings visible or God Tier outfit on, she hovered a few inches off the ground. Both girls looked tired, though quickly grew more interested and awake when their eyes fell onto Dave's form.

Regardless, Karkat didn't pull away from Dave. He refused to. The human's head was staying firmly nestled on Karkat's thighs until he woke up and lifted his stupid skull himself.

No one commented, perhaps understanding without needing to ask that Karkat could and would sink his claws into the first person who didn't give Dave their undivided attention. With Vriska there to keep her from falling, Terezi was across the block quickly and sank to her knees on Karkat's right, across from Rose.

"Yikes," Terezi muttered, cocking her head thoughtfully. She was sniffing subtly, trying not to be insensitive. Or maybe because Dave's scent was indistinguishable from that of the sopor and it was freaking her out as much as it was Karkat.

"Eloquently put," Rose remarked. She leaned over Dave to brush his hair out of the way again. "Can you sniff Dave's head for me? If you can somehow smell blood through skin, I'm going to assume that you can smell internal organs. I want to know if there's anything wrong with his brain."

Karkat felt his bloodpusher skip a beat at the mere suggestion. He clenched his jaw against the torrent of curses threatening to leap from his lips. He moved his hands away from Dave's face only so that Terezi could get as close as possible, though he was digging his claws so hard into the concrete floor that he felt like he was about to break his fingers. Not that Karkat cared. One of the only things in the entire universe that actually mattered to him was unconscious and dying on his lap. He couldn't think about anything else. If it wasn't for Kanaya's hand on his back, he might have forgotten to breathe and passed out minutes ago.

The time that Terezi spent sniffing Dave felt like it lasted hours. In reality, it was probably no time at all before she sighed heavily and sat back. Seemingly uncaring for the sopor she was getting all over herself, she drew her knees up to her chest and buried her face in her hands.

For a moment, Karkat felt like he was the one dying.

Up until then, Vriska had been idly hovering so that she didn't get herself dirty like everyone else. At the sight of her moirail so distraught, she immediately plopped down into the sopor and pulled Terezi against her. Karkat looked away while Vriska papped and shushed her quadrantmate, feeling a fresh wave of burning tears. He could have been comforting Dave if that stupid fuckhead would wake up instead of making Karkat worry so goddamn much.

He looked back to Terezi when the shushing stopped, though Vriska was still holding her close and running sopor-slicked fingers through her hair. Later, they would probably end up in a pile and there would be plenty of shushing and pale horn rubs, but for once, Karkat didn't give enough of a fuck to tease them about how open they were being in public. He licked his lips, staring at Dave once more, and rasped, "Is he going to be okay? Don't tell me that he won't be. If you say that Dave isn't going to get better, I swear to fuck I will kill him."

Terezi chuckled. Out of the corner of his eye, Karkat saw Vriska shift and didn't need to look over to know that she was brushing away her moirail's teal tears. "That might be the kindest thing to do, Karkles," she muttered. Then, letting out a long sigh, continued with her diagnosis. "I knew something was wrong when we got together for that human intervention thing. We vastly underestimated how bad this is. I know that in trolls, eating sopor causes shit like whatever Gamzee is, but humans are apparently a lot more susceptible to its effects. Dave's got way too much sopor in his blood. If you cut him open right now, there would be green speckled in there. It might even come out brown in some areas, it's so bad." She shook her head. "As for his head… Well, Dave just made the term "pan-rotted" literal. With the way that sopor spreads once it's eaten, his thinkpan is… um, well, dissolving. Like it's been left out in the sun for a few hours. This shit leaking out?" She ran a finger along Dave's ear, outlining the green lines trailing down his neck and then prodding the tear-like sopor tracks dripping from his eyes. "That's not sopor or blood. That's the slodged bits of his pan."

Abruptly, Karkat pulled away from Dave. He took one hard breath, then promptly bent over and upheaved what little he had managed to choke down that day. He was pretty sure that he was crying again, but between the dry heaving, how his entire body was trembling, and the overwhelming sensation of suffocation, Karkat couldn't give less of a fuck about the mutant red dismay fluid dribbling down his face.

All pretenses of avoiding pale flirtation were gone. Kanaya scooped him into her arms as soon as he was done heaving and used the sleeve of her shirt to wipe off his mouth. She shushed him firmly, stroking his cheek and back and hair as he came undone against her. If Karkat hadn't once pale crushed on her, he might have been freaking out even worse than before, but regardless of how he pitiful he thought Dave was, at the moment, Karkat was the one desperately needing to be pitied and coddled. And Kanaya knew that there would be no commitments or quadrant-filling once she finished comforting him, but dammit, did he need to be comforted.

They were in public, around some of their closest friends, but Kanaya practically enveloped Karkat against her and massaged the bases of his horns until he no longer had the muscle control or self-awareness to cry. It was humiliating and shameful but, fuck, was Karkat grateful for it.

Only after Kanaya had stopped rubbing his horns and simply stuck to massaging his back, did Karkat lift his head. Everyone was talking over him, trying to make plans about what to do or figure out how to heal Dave without a Life player. God Tier deaths could be so finicky that no one was all that eager to seal the deal and leave it up to fate. Would Dave's death count as Just, because of the way he had been acting toward them recently? Would it count as Heroic, because he was on his way to help fight Lord English and save everyone? No one was eager to try it and find out.

They talked and talked and talked and talked. Karkat didn't care. He stayed limp in Kanaya's arms, blinking back every resurgence of dismay fluid as he ran the tip of one claw through Dave's green-tinted hair. To touch him more would involve moving out of Kanaya's hold and, to be honest, she didn't seem willing to let Karkat go yet and he didn't have the energy to try. He wanted to close his eyes and sleep for a hundred sweeps.

Suddenly, Karkat stiffened. Had he imagined that, or…?

No, there it was a second time. Dave had made a noise, like a small cough in his sleep. The others were too busy bickering about the possibilities of getting a doomed Life player from the dream bubbles to Dave's physical body to notice.

He waited, breath held, and the instant that Dave twitched for the third time, Karkat tore himself free of Kanaya's arms. His friends went immediately quiet, watching on as Karkat knelt at Dave's side and eagerly cupped his face in his hands.

"Dave," he breathed in relief. The dismay fluid that was welling up that time was of joy as he watched the human's blank face twist in discomfort. He was alive. He was waking up. Karkat felt as though the weight of several planets had been lifted from his shoulders. "Dave, holy shit. You were— And fuck, I was so worried, I— _mnh_!"

His rambling was cut off when Dave, moving more quickly than he had any right to, suddenly lurched into a sitting position and slapped a hand over Karkat's mouth. Eyes wide, the troll froze, and so did everyone else. If Dave noticed that they had an audience, then he didn't care. Actually, based on the look in his eyes, Karkat doubted that Dave was aware of much at all. Those tiny pupils from before were gone. Instead, there was barely any red of Dave's irises visible. What little there was formed a dull ring around those huge pupils.

"_Dude_," Dave slurred like he could barely control his tongue. "Y've got no f'ckin' idea how long I've want'd y' to shut th' fuck up." He removed his hand, slid it behind Karkat's head, and grabbed a handful of hair hard before yanking the troll against him to crush him into a kiss.

Immediately, Karkat lashed out. He instinctively tried to slash at Dave's chest with his claws, only to let out a distressed noise when his wrist was caught and squeezed punishingly tight by Dave's free hand. He was hyperventilating. _Fuck_. Sure, he had wanted to kiss Dave for about half a sweep at that point, but not _like that_.

Karkat sucked in a hard breath when Dave was suddenly pried away from him. He looked up and only had a moment to be surprised to see Vriska holding the human by the back of his God Tier outfit. Dave's head lolled to the side, like a puppet with its strings cut, and Karkat let out a strangled noise of alarm at the sight of more green sludge leaking out of his ear. It hit the sopor on the ground with a splatter and the sight of a pinkish chunk mixed in with it almost made Karkat vomit again.

At his side, Rose made a disgusted noise. "Well, it seems that his emotional response and decision-making process are both shot," she remarked. "That won't result in anything good."

Before Karkat could snap at her for being insensitive, Kanaya was there again. She pulled him to his feet, holding Karkat against her. He was too emotionally exhausted to insist that she stop pale flirting with him. As selfish as it was to allow it, Karkat could really use the benefits of a moirail at the moment.

"We should get you back to your block," she muttered to him. "Dave will be fine. Rose will be much better at handling him than we would, with limited knowledge of human anatomy. You will feel better once you've rested."

By that point, Karkat was so covered in sopor that he doubted the dayterrors would even be an issue. He nodded absently. Dave was struggling weakly against Vriska, who was getting help in restraining him from Terezi. When Rose had said earlier that they wouldn't have a problem keeping Dave contained, she had been right. Karkat just hadn't expected her to mean that Dave would be physically unfit to move. And with his thinkpan the way it was, Karkat would have been surprised if Dave even remembered that he had God Tier powers.

Regardless, he knew that Kanaya had a point. Karkat had a lot to think about and several days worth of sleep to catch up on before he would feel like crawling out of his pile and dealing with people again. He forced himself to nod, no matter how badly he wanted to stay by Dave's side. "You're right," he muttered. "Let's… Yeah. Leave. Now, please."

He refused to look at Kanaya. He didn't need to see the pity in her eyes.

She put an arm around Karkat's shoulders and led him from the room without a word. On their way out, though, he could have sworn that he heard Dave struggling to get his name out. Karkat ignored it, but only managed because it wasn't really _Dave_ yelling after him. Not that it made it hurt any less.

A part of Karkat felt bad for taking Kanaya away from her matesprit when Rose was going to need emotional support too, but he mostly felt drained and, hell, Kanaya had been the one to leave with him. It wasn't like Karkat was making her. Had he not silently insisted on walking, he got the feeling that Kanaya would have gladly carried him. Which was sickeningly pale, but he was so fucking pathetic that he couldn't blame her.

When they got to his block, Karkat made a beeline for the horn pile and was swiftly down for the count. He wrapped his arms around all that he could fit and squeezed hard. The stupid honking was practically deafening, but whatever. It was better than listening to himself sob like a shit-rolling maggot. And also, it kept him from being able to hear Kanaya. He had the feeling that she was going to try for another comforting moment and Karkat did think that he deserved it. Being allowed to wallow in misery all on his own would be great, actually.

But the honking died down eventually, and when it did, Kanaya was there at his side. She cleared her throat, setting a hand on his shoulder. Despite himself, he relaxed.

"Do you want to be alone?" Kanaya asked gently. "I think that you need to be comforted, but I'm not your moirail. It wouldn't be my place to tell you what you do or don't need." She paused and, almost hopeful, added, "Unless you want me to."

Fuck, she was acting pathetic. He really needed her to be quiet.

Karkat twisted around, blinking up at her through bleary eyes. "I'm so worried about him," he managed after a moment, looking away from Kanaya. "I… you're going to think that I'm depraved but it's like no one quadrant is good enough for me. I want Dave to comfort me, and— and kiss me, sometimes because he pities me and sometimes because I'm pissing him off so badly that that's all he can think to do to shut me up. Fuck, Kanaya, sometimes I even want him to mediate between me and Vriska, or— or _anyone_, because fucking ashen crushes are _ridiculous_ and it would be way too goddamn great for him to get between me and someone I'm bickering with—" He stopped and took a deep breath, slinging on arm over his face so that he didn't have to look at the disgust no doubt on Kanaya's face. "He's so pathetic and frustrating, but I… I think that I really just want him to be okay."

It seemed like Kanaya was trying to process all of that before she replied. She started to say something, only to be cut off by the sound of her palmhusk chiming. Karkat tensed, expecting the worst. His fears were not sated when Kanaya sucked in a sharp breath and quickly stood.

He lifted his head and opened his eyes, alarmed to see Kanaya already holding her chainsaw with one hand. "What is it?" Karkat's gaze flickered to her stiff expression and back to her weapon. He swallowed hard. "You aren't going to use that on Dave. You aren't."

Kanaya hesitated. After a sweep on the meteor, the idea that Karkat could ever be a leader was absurdly laughable to him, but if anyone had ever respected whatever authority he may or may not have had, it was her. She sighed, as though he was asking something impossible, but begrudgingly flicked her wrist and turned to face him holding a meager-looking tube of lipstick instead of a chainsaw. "I won't," she agreed, "unless he forces my hand."

Shit, fine. Whatever. Karkat wasn't going to tell her that she couldn't employ self-defense. She was being generous enough in not killing Dave out-right, as she was apparently tempted to do. As much as he didn't like it, Karkat nodded and tried not to look as exhausted and wrung-out as he felt. "Thank you," he whispered. "Be safe. You'd better come out of this alive. You're one of the few people on this hunk of rock that isn't completely useless." Which was his way of saying, _"I don't know what I would do without you."_

No wonder she had no problem acting as his moirail. Karkat was awful at _"not pale flirting,"_ as it turned out.

Regardless, Kanaya nodded, her black-painted smile pulled tight. She seemed to understand because she didn't try to reassure Karkat or pap him again. Turning away, she said, "Of course," and then she was gone.

There was a stray thought that Karkat ought to join her, find out what Dave did to piss everyone off and help stop him, but he really didn't want to think about it. He was a coward. As shameful as it was, Karkat wanted to stay right there in that horn pile and alternate between sleeping and crying for a little while. The last few wipes with Dave had been so stressful. Karkat was terrified that his friend was going to die and he didn't know if he wanted to be there when it happened or not.

He thought of Kanaya and Feferi and Sollux, all friends of his who he had to watch die. Could he really do it for Dave, too? Sure, Kanaya came back, but that didn't mean his dayterrors weren't burned with jade and flashing with images of her gaping abdomen when he pulled her corpse against him.

No. Karkat couldn't do it. Not again.

Alone in his block, Karkat forgot to pay attention to his surroundings until a shadow fell over him. "Kanaya?" He rubbed his eyes free of the last of his tears, squinting up at what was definitely not Kanaya.

There was no hesitation. Karkat had his sickle out before he could reconsider, launching himself at Dave and sending them both tumbling over the floor. The effects of the sopor had made him slower than he would otherwise be, which was probably the only reason that Karkat was able to land a hit at all. He slashed a neat cut across Dave's shoulder, tearing his God Tier outfit in the process. Blood welled up, staining the fabric with a disgusting blend of red and green and brown.

Karkat froze, feeling the blood drain from his face. Fuck. Terezi had been right. There was so much sopor in Dave that he probably didn't feel anything at all. Which would explain why he didn't flinch in the slightest when Karkat cut him, or hesitate to wrap his hands around the troll's throat and force their positions to flip.

Lashing out with flailing legs, Karkat once again tried to bury his sickle in Dave's chest. The attack accomplished nothing. Karkat sucked in a painful breath as the crushing grip around his windpipe was released, only for Dave to grab his sickle and send it skidding across the floor of the block. There were plenty of other weapons scattered around, if only Karkat could reach them. He had never thought that he would need to carry more than a courtesy sickle in his sylladex, but damn, had he been fucking wrong. He had been so wrong, and Dave was going to kill him for it.

His legs were trapped against the ground too, pinned by Dave's knees as he returned his hands to cut off Karkat's air supply. Slender, pale fingers locked around his neck and squeezed, thumbs digging in to make Karkat choke and cough up spittle like a dying wiggler.

"Thi's your fault," Dave muttered, leering over Karkat. Their faces were so close together that he could count the flakes of dried sopor still clinging to his skin. "Couldn't've left well enough alone. Couldn't've been satisfied that I was 'appy. Doesn't count unless you're in on it, uh, K'kat? Always so fuckin' self'sh. We both're." And then he did exactly what Karkat had expected and was dreading: pressed their lips together in a loose approximation of a kiss.

He tasted awful, like death and copper and sopor. Karkat dug into Dave's wrists, unable to push without leverage and too exhausted without any air to pull. But he buried his claws into the human's flesh until he felt bone, scratching and scraping as best he could. If it hurt, then Dave gave no indication of it. The kiss remained lovingly gentle while Karkat gargled around his last breath.

There was a God-awful cracking sound and then the pressure around his neck was gone. Dave's hands fell away and his eyes fluttered shut behind his lopsided shades before he collapsed on top of the troll, limp.

Behind him was the last person that Karkat expected to see. Gamzee towered over their tangled forms, an unpleasant sneer on his face and a club clutched in one hand. Looking from the red-and-green splatter along the weapon to the caved-in spot on the back of Dave's head made Karkat's entire digestive tract seize up. There was a fresh mess of clumpy green running from Dave's ears, leaking from his eyes, his mouth hanging open and blood dribbling down his chin. Somehow, Karkat managed to keep himself from vomiting or sobbing all over again.

He wrapped his arms around Dave's shoulders as if that might save him if Gamzee decided to go for another blow. Despite the damage, Karkat felt Dave's labored breathing whispering across his cheek, right next to the troll's ragged bids for air, and was relieved despite himself. Dave was alive. It was okay. It was all going to be fine.

"Gamzee." Karkat licked his lips, mouth dry, and swallowed nervously. "What are you…? What was that about?"

The highblood gave him a look like Karkat was the stupid one for being rightfully curious and defensive. No one had seen Gamzee in perigees, at least, and it wasn't as though he had given them much reason to trust him. He wasn't in a sound place mentally.

Apparently, that had become a trend.

"Had my motherfucking gander bulbs all up on ya for a while, my invertebrother," Gamzee said at last. "Saw all this wicked shit going down. I all up and got my understandin' on about the wicked, miraculous machinations of sopor. I feel for my pink human bro, but I wasn't 'bout to let a motherfucker kill my best motherfucking friend." His lips twitched into what might have been a smile, had it not been for the horrifyingly sober look in his eyes. "Didn't I motherfucking warn you, brother? Shit rots your pan."

Yeah. He had said that seconds before promising to kill Karkat and everyone else in their group that was still alive. So he felt that he was justified in having forgotten that little tidbit.

Karkat carefully shifted, one hand cradling the back of Dave's head as he sat up. The human felt dead against him, chest barely rising and falling. Those tiny glimmers of life were all that Karkat had left to cling to. He prayed that Dave hadn't killed anyone before appearing in his block. Otherwise, if he died, it would surely be judged as Just.

"Thanks," Karkat muttered, not knowing how else to respond. It was weird that Gamzee still thought of him as his best friend, still apparently had a pale crush on him, but didn't seem to care that Karkat had been being shush-papped by Kanaya and calling Dave his "best friend" for a little over half a sweep. Maybe it just wasn't on his list of priorities. "You got off sopor," he said slowly, looking up at Gamzee. It was impossible to read his expression. Karkat had no idea what the highblood was thinking. "Is there…? I mean, can we do the same for Dave? Do you think he could go back to living normally?" Or, as normally as they could manage on the meteor.

He felt his bloodpusher drop when Gamzee's grin twisted into a frown. The clown actually looked sad, though that was probably because he was going to deliver news that he knew Karkat didn't want to hear and not out of any fondness for Dave.

"'fraid not, brother." Gamzee bent down, crouched in front of Karkat. If he tried to go in for a pap, he was going to get bit. "It's another one of those miraculous differences between us. Sopor looks to be even stronger for human bros. He bleeds slurry instead of blood now." As if to prove his point, Gamzee lifted his club to his lips and ran his tongue along the brown-ish bloodstain. Karkat winced at the sight but his discomfort was paid no mind. "There's no comin' back from that, Karbro. Might all up and be more merciful to end it now."

"No." Karkat swallowed another wave of tears. "No, I'm not… There's no way. Dave won't die. I'm not going to kill him. It'll be fine. I'll make him be okay because if he isn't, I'll never fucking forgive him for it. For doing this to me." He sniffled, tucking his face against the top of Dave's head. There was no human smell to him anymore, only blood and sopor. "Fuck," Karkat croaked. "He's right. I'm so goddamn selfish."

Gamzee said nothing. He stayed where he was and watched Karkat with contemplative eyes as the lowblood got his palmhusk out. He couldn't decide who would be better to message so, fuck it, opened a group memo instead. Across from him, Gamzee's own palmhusk was buzzing in his pocket with every message but he seemed content to ignore it.

**carcinoGeneticist [CG] opened memo on board TEAM ADORABLOODTHIRSTY.**

**CG: WOW THESE FUCKING MEMO BOARDS ARE JUST A USELESS AS I REMEMBER.  
CG: I DON'T KNOW WHY WE DIDN'T DELETE ALL OF THEM. THE LAST MEMO ON THIS BOARD WAS JUST AFTER GAMZEE LOST HIS FUCKING MARBLES.  
CG: ASSUMING, OF COURSE, THAT HE EVER HAD ANY MARBLES TO BEGIN WITH AND WE WEREN'T BEING PLAYED FOR CHUMPS THE WHOLE TIME, DISTRACTED BY BRIGHT FLASHING COLORS AND BICYCLE HORNS, AND TRICKED INTO LOOKING FOR MARBLES THAT WERE NEVER THERE LIKE THE GULLIBLE DEGENERATES WE HAVE PROVEN OURSELVES TO BE.  
CG: SPEAKING OF GAMZEE, HE'S UH  
CG: HERE.  
CG: IN MY BLOCK.  
CG: SO IS DAVE, IF THAT'S STILL A THING YOU PEOPLE CARE ABOUT.**

**arachnidsGrip [AG] responded to memo.**

**gallowsCalibrator [GC] responded to memo.**

**AG: Oh, thank fuuuuuuuuck.  
AG: Karkat, you have no idea how laaaaaaaame it is having to deal with these idiots, all wound up and panicking as if there's anywhere Dave can scurry off to.  
AG: I mean, we're on a meteor for fuck's sake!  
AG: Where is he going to go?  
GC: L1K3 VR1SK4, 1'M 4LSO 1NCR3D1BLY R3L13V3D TH4T D4V3 1S W1TH YOU 4ND NOT DY1NG  
GC: G4MZ33 1S 4NOTH3R STORY  
GC: WH4T 1S H3 DO1NG?  
CG: FUCK, I DON'T KNOW. WATCHING ME, I GUESS.  
CG: HE'S NOT HERE TO KILL ME, IF THAT'S WHAT YOU'RE WORRIED ABOUT. HE WOULD HAVE ALREADY DONE IT IF THAT WAS HIS GOAL.  
CG: OR HE COULD HAVE STAYED IN THE VENTS HONKING HIS FUCKING BULGE AND LET DAVE FINISH CHOKING ME OUT. I THINK THAT THE END RESULT IS THE SAME, EITHER WAY.  
AG: W8.  
AG: Dave was choking you?  
AG: I mean, he socked me pretty goddamn good 8efore disappearing on us.  
AG: 8ut I didn't think you would be very high on the list of people he was really eager to kill.  
CG: YOU WOULD THINK.  
CG: AND I *DID* THINK, BUT  
CG: I DON'T KNOW. THIS WHOLE THING HAS BECOME SO FUCKED UP.  
GC: 1F 1T H3LPS, W3'R3 ON TH3 W4Y TO YOUR BLOCK  
GC: VR1SK4 PL4YS B31NG B1TCHY BUT SH3 W4S JUST 4S 1NSUFF3R4BLY WORR13D 4S TH3 R3ST OF US  
AG: (Shut uuuuuuuup!)  
GC: (H3H3H3)**

**grimAuxiliatrix [GT] responded to memo.**

**GA: Rose And I Are Also Heading For Your Location Karkat  
GA: You Were Not There So You Wouldnt Know But Dave Broke Her Palmhusk So I Am Relaying Information From The Both Of Us  
GA: She Would Like To Know If Dave Is Alright  
CG: FUCK, HOW DO HUMANS DEFINE "ALRIGHT"?  
CG: HE'S BREATHING. KIND OF. IT'S A LITTLE RAGGED BUT AT LEAST HE'S DRAWING AIR ON HIS OWN.  
CG: HE HAD ME PINNED WHEN HE WAS CHOKING ME, SO GAMZEE KNOCKED HIM UPSIDE THE HEAD WITH HIS CLUB. IT MADE DAVE PASS OUT, BUT NOW HIS SKULL IS INDENTED. AND I HEARD SOMETHING SNAP SO IT'S PROBABLY VERY FUCKING BROKEN.  
GC: W3LL  
GC: FUCK  
GA: Rose Echoes Those Sentiments But Far Less Politely  
CG: WOULD YOU CHUCKLEFUCKS JUST HURRY UP AND GET HERE?**

**carcinoGeneticist [CG] stopped responding to memo.**

"You can go," Karkat said to Gamzee without looking up from his palmhusk. The discussion in the memo was carrying on without him, but he wasn't reading it. He was fine with letting the pings of color flash in his blurry vision. "I mean, if you don't want the others to see you. I'm not sure if Kanaya still wants to kill you or not. It might be easier for you if you were already gone by the time they arrived."

He didn't hear Gamzee move and was taken aback to see a grey hand touch the top of his palmhusk and, far more gently than Karkat would have expected, lower it so that he was making eye-contact with Gamzee. He blinked, surprised.

"I'll mothefuckin' leave," the highblood drawled in a gravelly voice, "only once I know you're gonna be all up and fine with him, bro. When those other motherfuckers get here, they won't even know I'm watchin'." Gamzee's face split as he grinned. "_You_ didn't. Too focused on a specific set of eyes to notice another motherfuckin' pair glued to you."

Karkat swallowed hard. Suddenly, he wanted nothing more than for Gamzee to leave.

He didn't. He stayed right where he was, staring at Karkat as though nothing could convince him to look away. As useless as his sickle would be in a strife against a murderous highblood, Karkat desperately wished that he had it back. Even if it was just so he could say that he had put up a fight. He had told his friends that Gamzee didn't want to kill him, but if he inexplicably changed his mind, there was nothing that Karkat would be able to do to stop him. It would be as easy as leaning forward, grabbing either side of Karkat's face, and jerking hard to one side. The bones in his neck would snap before he could even think about begging for his life like the worm he was.

The stillness between them broke when Gamzee reached for him. Karkat stiffened, recoiling and squeezing his eyes shut tight against the familiar pin-pricks of dismay fluid. He held Dave a little tighter, sickeningly wishing for his friend's proper scent to be what was tickling his nose instead of the putrid reeking of sopor. If he was going to die, he would have at least liked a comforting smell to detract from the dead weight in his arms.

There was a knock on his door and it was flung open without waiting for permission. Hesitantly, Karkat cracked his eyes open. He couldn't know if Gamzee had changed his mind before or after he heard someone approaching, but whatever the reason, he was gone.

A second after that registered, Terezi flung her arms around Karkat's neck. He heard her saying something, either to him or to Vriska, but couldn't care less. One of them tried to coax him to release the death grip he had on Dave's unconscious body, but Karkat snarled and snapped his teeth until they backed off. He wasn't letting go. Dave was going to stay right where he was and when he woke up (_when_, not _if_) he was going to have to get used to never being out of Karkat's sight. He wasn't letting go of Dave again.

Not that he had much of a choice in the matter. Kanaya and Rose arrived together and Karkat almost immediately found himself being lifted off of the ground and away from Dave. He bit down on the hands wrapped around his torso on impulse, not letting go even when he saw jade prickling from grey skin through his red-tinted tears. His bite only let up once he again found himself smothered against Kanaya and her other hand gently rubbed his jaw until he weakly removed his fangs from her skin. It reminded him of how he had probably shredded Dave's wrists a mere few minutes ago and, as much as he hated himself for spending so much time crying, Kanaya let him.

He knew that Dave had been removed from his block when the stench of him faded. The others were gone too, probably out of respect for the disgustingly pale treatment Karkat was getting. Kanaya had settled into his pile and was rubbing his horns with one hand, the other under his sweater to stroke his grub scars. It felt almost dirty, letting her do that when they weren't officially moirails, but Karkat didn't make her stop either. He was purring and chirping in the back of his throat, sobs growing softer and weaker the longer she kept it up. She didn't say anything, but the steady sound of her shushing was more than enough.

"I'm sorry—" Karkat tried to apologize at one point, for breaking down and forcing her to stand in like some sort of pale slut, but didn't get to finish.

She had pressed one finger to his lips and shushed him good and hard for that. The look in her eyes had been so nauseating fond that Karkat had been forced to turn away. "You're absolutely pathetic," Kanaya had said and continued exactly the way she had been comforting him before.

After that, Karkat didn't try to speak. He didn't need to make things any worse.


	5. i say, with my last breath:

It might have been hours that they laid there or, perhaps, only a few minutes. Karkat wouldn't have known either way, because to know required checking his palmhusk or asking Kanaya to do so, but she had coddled him so thoroughly that all forms of higher thinking were fuzzy and distant. He thought that he might have just discovered a way to get high off of pale displays, actually, because Karkat was having trouble moving and talking and remembering how to cry. Damn, she was good.

She did, eventually, stop. If she hadn't, Karkat might have stayed blissed out on those comforting pale pheromones and the soothing rumbling from the back of her throat for the rest of the day. Not that he didn't want to, but Dave…

Yeah. Dave.

Once Karkat remembered how to move, Kanaya helped him to his feet. He had a pounding headache, but that was probably from crying so goddamn much that his anguish bladder was squeezed dry. He still felt like crying, but with Kanaya's hand on his shoulder and a weak chant of reassuring thoughts, he managed to hold himself off and focus on walking. She seemed to know where they were going, so Karkat trusted her to lead him to Dave. Where else would they be going? There was nowhere on the meteor, or in all of what remained of their universe, that Karkat wanted to be more than he needed to be at Dave's side.

He found himself beneath the surface of the meteor, in one of the deeper sections of the compound. It was probably another one of the many empty and unused blocks everywhere. Terezi and Vriska liked to explore the other areas of the compound often so they had most likely been the ones to suggest using it.

He knew that their medical abilities were limited, but that didn't make it any easier to walk into a small, empty storage block and find Dave laying face-down on a spare table with nothing more than spare clothes to stem his bleeding.

In the brighter light, the damage done to the human was impossible to ignore. Karkat couldn't stop staring at the caved-in back of his head, like a deflated ball or a hive with a hole blown in the side. It didn't bleed, the skin remaining unbroken over the fractured part of his skull, but that didn't mean that Dave wasn't bleeding elsewhere. It was almost as though they had squeezed a cheap packet of grubsauce — sopor-infused blood had been forced from all of Dave's facial orifices, coating his lips and dripping from his ears and leaking from his nose and running from his eyes like tears. He was so pale that Karkat could see every vein in brilliant detail, far darker than they should have been and standing out against the placid backdrop like stars against the night sky. His wrists where Karkat had latched onto with his claws were wrapped in shirts that kept them out of sight, but some minor surgery had been done because he saw Terezi's needle and thread that she used for her scalemates lying in a small pool of Dave's blood nearby. Karkat winced at the sight, feeling sick as he remembered what a number he had done on Dave's wrists. How the skin hung off of him in ribbons, barely attached, and the delicate muscles that handled fine motor skills had almost been spilling out.

Nothing he had thought about saying was important so Karkat voiced none of it. He weakly grabbed for Kanaya's arm, tucking his face into her neck to avoid looking any longer.

"We can't reverse the damage ourselves," Rose was saying by the time Karkat bothered tuning into the discussion, "but if we can find a God Tiered Life player in the dream bubbles and bring them to Dave, he should be fine. It worked on the Mayor."

"Yeah," Terezi agreed. "Feferi healed him up better than ever. But do we have enough time to track down a doomed version of her before…?"

No one said anything, probably because no one knew the answer.

Honestly, Karkat didn't care what they did, so long as Dave's head was rounded again and he stopped bleeding. Or, at the very least, bled normal, human red. He was so worried that he felt physically sick and nothing was helping. Fuck, why couldn't things just get better? Why hadn't Karkat realized what was happening sooner and prevented it?

As if responding to his thoughts, Dave twitched on the table and groaned. Everyone immediately went silent. All Karkat did was stare in shock. He was surprised that Dave even had the energy to be awake, let alone shift and make noises.

He started forward toward his friend, only to be stopped by Kanaya tightening her grip on Karkat's shoulder. He almost bit her for it, insistent on being at Dave's side. Before he could, she had drawn him against herself once more and placed a hand over his cheek before giving an insistent shush against his ear. Karkat wasn't completely swayed by that, but the seriousness of the gesture made him begrudgingly hang back.

The memory of Dave's hands around his neck kept Karkat in Kanaya's arms. He couldn't blame her for being protective — not when she already thought of him as so hopelessly pathetic and Dave had made a point of signaling him out as the prime target for his misplaced aggressions. He ultimately stayed put only when Rose inched forward. Surely, as a human, she would know how to help.

Karkat held his breath as Rose reached a hand for Dave's shoulder. He didn't try to stop her, still laying flat on the table. She was a mere breath away before, without warning, Dave's spine arched hard and his head snapped back as though being yanked on by an invisible hand. His eyes were open but the irises weren't visible, rolled up in the back of his head as he once again collapsed. Dave's body began to convulse, limbs seized up and shaking hard enough to make the table creak in protest. Spit dribbled from his lips, green-tinted foam building up around his lips as Dave made horrible choking sounds. His jaw snapped shut and he was silent, but fresh blood joined the mess of saliva coating his chin and Karkat doubted that his being quiet was a good thing.

Unlike the trolls, Rose didn't back away from her brother's fit. She slid right up next to him and shoved her hands under his forehead, cushioning him just in time to prevent Dave from slamming his head against the table. Other than that, she did nothing. No one spoke or moved or hardly breathed until, after what felt like an eternity but must have just been a few minutes, Dave stilled and went limp once more.

She waited a few moments to be sure that Dave really was done, but then Rose carefully removed her hands and shifted the human to be lying on his side. Karkat wasn't sure what the purpose was, but he relaxed with Dave's face turned to him, now able to see his friend's lips parted around labored breaths.

"What was that?" Karkat managed, voice barely loud enough to be heard.

Rose shot him a sympathetic grimace. "I think that it was a seizure. I'm not sure if your species has an equivalent, but in humans, it can sometimes be caused by brain damage. Which means that his "condition" is about to get a lot worse. If he continues to convulse like that, he risks hurting himself on the outside, but he's also sloshing his brain around in his skull and aggravating whatever decomposition effect is already in progress." She shook her head, looking disgusted. "That is not going to help anything."

The first of the trolls to recover from the surprise, Vriska stepped forward to stand next to Dave on the table. She prodded his cheek curiously, face crinkling in disgust as her hand came back with drool and sopor on it. "No, we don't have seizures," Vriska remarked. "Or if we do, we don't have a word for it. Most reasonable trolls would kill anyone they saw having a fit like that. Looks like it might even be the most merciful thing to do for the sucker." She glanced up at Rose and, seeing that the human girl wasn't amused, continued more reasonably. "So if those "seizures" are going to make him worse, why don't we just tie him down? I don't think he's in much of a position to protest."

"We could," Rose acknowledged, "but it's not recommended. If he gets stronger convulsions, we risk causing broken bones or bruising if he's restrained." As she spoke, she idly wiped Dave's mouth clean of blood and sopor and drool with her self-cleaning sleeve. When his lips parted, Karkat could see the laceration where he had bit down hard enough on his tongue to nearly take the tip off. The sight made him grimace. "I'm not a medical professional, but when I was younger I had a friend in grade school who had epilepsy and mother insisted that I take a class in first-aid in case it was ever necessary. Looking back, I suppose she was right. There's no clear cause of seizures from what I can remember, other than…" she trailed off, thinking hard about something before saying, slowly as if reading out of a textbook, "sudden and excessive electrical activity in the brain. Muscle spasms are a more extreme symptom, but that's the crux of the issue."

Vriska groaned in annoyance. "Great! It can't get any more vague than that! How are we supposed to treat something we don't know the cause of?"

Above him, Kanaya hummed thoughtfully and cleared her throat. Even with all of their friends' attention turning to the two of them, she made no move to unwind her arms from around Karkat. He supposed that there were other things paler than being held and didn't bother mustering up the energy to be exasperated.

"Well, we can't treat the problem," Kanaya said slowly, "but we can treat at least that particular symptom. More brain damage isn't ideal, and… sopor is well-known as a muscle relaxant. It would help keep Dave from being able to do much more than twitch when another "seizure" hits."

Had she not spent the last several hours keeping Karkat from having a mental breakdown, he would have clawed her throat at the suggestion. As it was, he immediately yanked out of her arms, whirling to face Kanaya with a sneer as he placed himself between her and Dave. Even if he was the weakest fighter in the room and still missing his sickle, he would have to be tied down himself before he let a God-awful idea like that anywhere _near_ Dave.

"Are you being serious or are you just as pan-rotted as Dave is?" Karkat just about shrieked, gesturing to the unconscious human. "He's only like this in the first place because someone let him get addicted to sopor in the first place! Oh, wait! That was me, wasn't it? I was the blithering shithead who let him devolve to the point that he can barely even breathe! You can argue that he had personal choice, but you would be fucking wrong because I'm the one who gave him such a blatantly fucking obvious choice! It hardly even counts as a choice, actually! Who would take being miserable and exhausted every waking hour and terrified every sleeping hour over a seemingly harmless drug that can make all of your problems seem completely nonexistent? Fuck, I should have known! He was manipulating me from day fucking one to keep his lecherous claws sunken as deeply into my sopor supply as possible, and I looked him in the eye and let him do it for perigees! And why, you may ask? Wow, what a goddamn stellar question! Because I'm just so out-of-my-own-thinkpan, horns over heels, sick to my stomach, in the throes of such disgusting passionate pity and hatred for this literal braindead sack of hoofbeast shit that I call my best friend, that I thought, _"Fuck the risks, at least you get to see him shirtless! Even if he would never so much as prod you suggestively, hey, you've got plenty of new material for while you're rolling around in your contemptible, permanently soiled jerkoff trousers like the worthless little wiggler that you are!"_ So this is all my goddamn fault, because when isn't it, and I am going to fix it, which means that, rule number one, sopor is not allowed anywhere near here! I don't ever want to even hear of it again! The rest of you can roll around in your coons like degenerates and enjoy the bliss of uninterrupted sleep, but I have far more important concerns on my thinkpan, starting with the immediate medical care that we could have been providing if you useless shit-flinging maggots would stop wasting time with inane, weak excuses for ideas!"

Karkat stopped to take a breath and immediately found Kanaya's hand muffling him. She looked a little too stunned to be annoyed, like most of what Karkat had said had gone in one ear and out the other and she hadn't processed enough to be irritated. Regardless, her voice was firm when she said, slowly, "Karkat. You need to calm down. Yelling at everyone isn't helping to solve the problem and you're only working yourself up again."

He didn't feel like dignifying that with an answer. Instead, Karkat glared until Kanaya rolled her eyes and removed her hand. Once she did, he took a deep, calming breath and kept his next statement brief. "I will be a lot better if someone suggests something reasonable. I fail to see how applying more sopor could even _conceivably_ be a good plan."

When it seemed like no one was going to refute him, Rose sighed and stepped forward. She set a hand on his shoulder, instantly quieting Karkat as he was about to protest, on the basis that she knew nothing about sopor. He was fairly certain that they had never touched before and the feeling of a body as warm as his reminded him so sharply of Dave that it knocked the breath out of him.

"I don't like it any more than you do," she muttered, lavender eyes drifting over to Dave. "Either way, he's already dying. If we continue to give him small doses of sopor, enough to keep him from being able to move too much, it will keep his seizures under control and keep him from being able to hurt one of us while we find a more permanent solution. Plus, on top of all that his body is already going through, I don't want to see what a withdrawal is going to look like when there's sopor in his veins. Please, Karkat." Rose's expression turned pleading, the sort of look that he could have never pictured on her face. Not in a thousand sweeps. "For him."

The fact that she was asking for her permission stunned Karkat. Sure, he had just fallen ass-backward into the most awkward love confession of paradox space and done it right in front of some of his closest friends, to boot, but that didn't mean that he had any say in Dave's well-being. They weren't official. It was a stupid, hopeless little crush and Karkat would consider himself lucky if Dave didn't hate him once he found out about it, let alone returned it. But even though knocking him out would be far faster and much simpler, Rose was asking his permission.

Almost like it was the reassurance that Dave would have wanted.

Unable to look at his unconscious friend, Karkat turned his gaze to the ground. "For him," he echoed, voice raw.

Rose nodded, smiling gratefully, and went to alchemize fresh sopor. No one tried to stop her but no one went with her, either. Not even Kanaya. She hovered at Karkat's side while he stood next to Dave, unwilling to look at his friend but equally unwilling to be apart.

Eventually, Karkat gave in and let his hand drift across the table to splay his fingers across Dave's open palm. He needed to be cleaned. There wasn't a place on his skin without sopor sticking to it, except for his God Tier outfit, which had finally cleaned itself. Where they were touching, Dave felt feverish. Far hotter than he should have been, even for his red blood.

He was dying. Karkat knew that, but that didn't stop the faint glimmer of hope he felt when Dave made an ugly noise in his sleep and gently twitched his hand, as though wanting to squeeze Karkat's fingers.

"It's okay," Karkat muttered to himself. "It'll be fine, Dave. You'll be fine. You've been through so much worse than this… It would be so uncool if you let this be what killed you."

Off to the side, Vriska snorted. "You know we're still here, don't you?"

It was intended to be mocking, but her words lacked their usual venom. Karkat couldn't blame her. Whatever pseudo black-flirting thing they had, he doubted that Vriska would ever see him as an equal ever again. Not with how pathetic he had been acting recently. But that was fine. He didn't need any of their respect or fear or loyalty or whatever. Being a leader would be hard without those things, but Karkat felt that he would gladly give up being a leader forever if it meant that Dave would be there to tease him about it.

After that, the silence that hung in the room was tense. Terezi drifted closer to the table, head tilted toward Dave with an expression on her face that Karkat couldn't place. Something like regret, maybe. She hadn't seen Dave much the last few perigees, but maybe she had the same thoughts that Karkat did: if she had been more observant, if she had pushed harder for him to be open, if she had bothered to pay attention… What if, what if, what if?

The cycle was never-ending.

While Rose was gone, Karkat was pretty sure that Dave had another seizure. He didn't convulse again, but he went rigid and his eyes snapped open, pupils flicking from side to side rapidly for nearly a minute before Dave relaxed and returned to unconsciousness. Watching it was awful. All Karkat wanted to do was help, but he had no idea how. Dave looked so scared.

After long enough that Karkat was starting to get impatient, Rose finally returned. He wasn't happy to see that she had sopor with her, but they had already decided and Karkat was a man of his word. Most of the time. He said nothing when Rose spooned sopor into Dave's parted mouth. From her sylladex, she pulled what had likely been the reason for her delay: her purple throne pillow. Carefully, she positioned it under Dave's head, but made no move to pull away once finished. She gently cast her fingers through his clumped and sticky hair, eyes glued to his chest like it might cease to rise and fall if she looked away for even a moment. Karkat was doing the same, fingers pressed over Dave's wrist to feel every fluttering beat of his bloodpusher. Something weak was better than nothing at all.

Dave would live. He had to.

The next few days, Karkat didn't sleep. It wasn't that he was forcing himself to keep his eyes open or something like that, it was that he really wasn't tired. He didn't understand how any of his friends could comfortably sleep with Dave all but comatose. It felt like Karkat had left a part of himself clutched in his friend's hands and he wouldn't feel whole until Dave opened his eyes and gave Karkat permission to do so.

Physically, he was perfectly capable of leaving Dave's temporary medical block, but he couldn't bare to. Not when he was barely waking up. Not when every time he did wake up, his condition deteriorated.

Not when every time he woke up could be the last.

The first time Dave came to, Rose had been tending to him. She had alchemized proper bandages and was trying to keep his hands from developing an infection after what Karkat had done to them by cleaning and rewrapping them frequently. Dave had lashed out at her almost immediately, snarling gibberish and swinging wildly with his sword until Kanaya pinned him to the wall by running Terezi's cane through his shoulder.

Karkat probably would have lost his shit and screamed at Kanaya for doing that, but he had been just as bewildered as everyone else because, despite the fact that Dave had several severed muscles and tendons and would probably never be able to move his arm correctly again, he mindlessly struggled against the pressure holding him back until blood loss rendered him unconscious. He could no longer process pain. That, or the part of his brain that cared was fried. Either way, the meaning was the same: his time was rapidly growing shorter.

After that, they alchemized a rope to tie around Dave's waist to keep him attached to the table without risking hurting him during the more violent seizures. His God Tier clothes were kept folded nearly on the floor next to him, as he was needing more bandages every day, it seemed, and it was a hassle to get his clothes off every time.

Terezi's first diagnosis, that Dave's brain was practically melting, had been correct but it wasn't the entire picture. The sopor pumping through Dave's veins was causing a full-body system shut down. Karkat had never watched something decompose before, but he held back the bile so that he could be the one feeding Dave (twice a day), giving him his sopor allowances for the day (just enough to keep him calm), and cleaning him when necessary (bathroom use was a physical impossibility for him).

The way Karkat saw it, he had failed Dave once already by allowing him to become dependent on sopor in the first place. While Rose and Kanaya researched possible cures in the meteor's extensive bookhive and Vriska and Terezi scoured every dream bubble they came across for a God Tier Life player, Karkat never left Dave's side. It was only fair, he thought, that he worked as hard as he could to right his mistake. And Dave needed constant vigilance.

The second time that Dave woke up, Karkat had been the only one there. He couldn't talk with his throat swollen and rubbed raw by whatever the fuck the sopor was doing to him, but Dave hadn't needed to speak to get Karkat to come closer. The rope around his waist didn't stop him from grabbing the troll by his horns and slamming his face into the edge of the table. He did it a second time, then a third, and only stopped because Karkat dug his claws into Dave's hands and the resulting blood made his horns too sick for him to keep a firm grip.

While Kanaya had set his broken nose and let Karkat shush her until she was no longer threatening to kill Dave every other sentence, Rose had given her theory. Her idea was that Dave's thinkpan was being "attacked" by the sopor from all sides. Rather than starting out and working its way in, or vice versa, Dave's bloodstream pumped sopor to every part of his brain and broke it all down equally as quickly. Which wasn't all that fast, relatively speaking. It was a horribly arduous process. But from what little she knew of human anatomy before the Game, Rose explained that the glands that controlled "emotion" and "behavior" were small compared to other parts of the brain. Those would be the first to go.

So Karkat understood, at least a little, while Dave was constantly trying to beat the shit out of everyone. He recognized them, at least subconsciously, and the recognition sparked some sort of emotional reaction. But since Dave no longer understood how to interpret emotions or how to act upon those interpretations, the default human "flight or fight" response caused him to lash out.

Dave didn't try to kiss Karkat anymore. He just tried to make everything hurt.

Most of the time, what he did was easy to hide and not altogether painful, because Dave's motor control was slipping. But sometimes there were bruises or cuts or even burns, after one particularly nasty encounter where Dave got out of the binds around his wrists by dislocating them and then dug the ropes into Karkat's skin until angry red welts were left behind. He'd only gotten out of that one because all of the excitement had caused another seizure, which gave Karkat the opportunity to get Dave back onto the table once he'd passed out immediately after.

After that, they upgraded to chains. Since Karkat was in charge of Dave, he forgot the table entirely. Most of the time, they would end up tousling on the floor by the end of the day anyway. He set up a soft spot on the ground in the back corner of the block for Dave and locked one of the chains around his neck and used another to bind his wrists behind his back. He hated doing it, but with Dave attached to the wall via his makeshift collar, he could do a lot less damage. There was still the occasional bruise or a bloody nose from a well-timed kick or knee to the jaw, but Karkat didn't care. He really, _really_ didn't. It was his punishment, he thought, for not being a better friend. So Karkat was going to deal with it and do his best to be there for Dave. For as long as he could make a difference.

It was jarring sometimes, though. Karkat didn't often look in mirrors, so when he did, he was surprised to see how he had changed. He'd always been skinny and small, but his cheeks were sunken and the bags around his eyes looked like tattoos, they were so pronounced. His clothes practically swallowed his frame up and, without the baggy sweater and pants, Karkat was hard-pressed to find a part of his body that wasn't marked up or didn't ache to move. Even his horn beds hurt, still oversensitive from the time that Dave dug his nails into the base of his horns hard enough to draw blood.

The Mayor would join Karkat in his vigilance sometimes. Those were good days only because having him around helped Karkat keep enough sense to remember that he needed to keep his distance from Dave. Whenever the Mayor could catch a break from his duties as a fairly elected official, he would set up a little can building to keep Dave company. Usually, they were carelessly knocked over the next time one of their skirmishes ended up too far away from the wall, but Karkat liked to think that Dave enjoyed the scenery for that short time.

"I'm really worried about you, Dave," Karkat said one day, the Mayor sitting in his lap quietly. He had his legs crossed, relaxed on the floor in front of Dave. The human wasn't being as peaceful as either of them, though.

He was screeching what sounded like obscenities and pulling pointless against the chain around his neck in an attempt to reach Karkat. He was close, though. Another step and he would be there, but there were helpful lines drawn on the ground with Terezi's chalk to show the safe distance to maintain. Karkat was pushing it, but a few days ago Dave's common sense had seemingly gone too and he hadn't tried kicking the troll since.

Ignoring his yelling, Karkat sighed and continued in a soft tone. "Kanaya says that they haven't found anything and they've nearly gone through every relevant tomb in the bookhive. I'm not surprised that the research into long term effects of sopor isn't very thorough, but… I had hoped, you know? I really don't want you to die, Dave, but I can't stop it, either. If I don't give you sopor, your body will probably have a full system failure without what it has become dependent on. And if I do give you sopor, well…" He gestured at Dave, looking away. "Well, you know better than anyone what that causes."

Karkat stiffened when Dave, quick as a whip, latched onto his hand with his teeth. But that was what happened when someone got even an inch too close to Terezi's boundary limit. The Mayor was smart enough to move before Karkat was yanked unceremoniously forward, going down hard on his abdomen at Dave's feet. He twisted around onto his back just in time for the blond to crash into him, a tightly locked mass of flailing limbs as they both struggled to get the upper hand.

It wasn't much of a fight. Karkat was all too aware of how damaged Dave already was. The sopor rotting him from the inside out was causing skin to boil away in places, ligaments fraying around joints and muscle deteriorating. Dave wasn't that strong anymore but he didn't need to be. He straddled Karkat's legs, leaning over him and snarling furiously. The way that he tugged at his bonds said that, had he a say in the matter, his hands would have been drawing blood by that point. He snapped with his teeth anyway, sopor-infused and foaming drool dripping onto Karkat's sweater and splattering on his face.

It wasn't that hard to avoid being bitten, though. Karkat still had his hands and, as it turned out, a hand on Dave's forehead distracted him sufficiently enough with trying to bite the troll's wrist that the worst part was just the spit getting everywhere.

Oh, wait. No. The worst part was definitely that the person Karkat adored most in the world was mindlessly attempting to kill him. Again.

"Dave," he muttered, gently using his other hand — the one with fresh bite marks in it — to cup the human's cheek. He could have sworn that Dave stiffened at the sound of his name. Beneath Karkat's touch, the thin skin was little more than a membrane. With a few more days of deterioration, Karkat was sure that he would be able to see all of Dave's blunt human teeth. Well, at least until his gums rotted away and the roots shriveled up and they fell out with nothing to hold them in place.

There was so much to say. Maybe Karkat was imagining it, but there was almost a flicker of what could have been recognition in those red eyes. Dave wasn't trying to bite him anymore. Was that progress? A sign that he could improve? Or was Karkat simply getting his hopes up and Dave was waiting for the opportune moment to bite again?

He shoved the thought away. No, he refused to think the worst of Dave. The others could insist that he was mindless and barely alive, but as long as he was breathing, panting over Karkat like he was starving for air, it was okay. Karkat would force it to be fine if he had to.

"I'm sorry," he breathed, breaking eye contact and looking away. "This is all my fault, Dave. I could have done something when I first noticed what was happening, but I… I was… so fucking _happy_ that you were happy. That you were happy with me. That we were… we could be happy together." He swallowed thickly, steeling himself. "If you're going to die anyway, I… don't care if you don't understand me right now or don't remember this conversation, I just— need to say it. Dave, I—"

He was cut off when a sudden movement startled him. Karkat recoiled, expecting the worst, but all that he felt was a gentle bump against his forehead. He cracked open one of his tightly-clenched eyes, looking up at Dave with amazement. For the first time in… however long Karkat had been in that block taking care of him, there was no animosity on his face. In fact, Dave almost looked fond. The look in his eyes was unfocused but the meaning was clear.

_"I love you too, Karkat."_

For a moment, it felt like he was going to cry. But then Karkat remembered himself. He swallowed every bit of common sense telling him not to and kissed Dave.

Lips curled up against his, almost into a sneer, but then there was pressure being returned and Dave's jaw moved weakly. Almost like he was trying to remember how in the hell kissing was supposed to work. Karkat curled his fingers carefully around the hollowed back of Dave's head, stroking his other hands along his cheek to guide them both. The only person Karkat had ever kissed was Terezi, once before the Game started and when their relationship was still "complicated," at best. It had been messy and uncoordinated and nowhere near as nice as kissing Dave was. He wasn't an expert by any means but Karkat tried anyway, taking the lead and urging Dave into an angle that made it easier to get closer.

And, _fuck_, they were already practically enveloping each other. Dave lowered his hips down flush to Karkat's, chests nearly touching as their kiss grew more heated. He shuddered when he felt Dave's tongue dart out, running sloppily along Karkat's lower lip. He almost returned the gesture, only for Dave to suddenly open his jaw as wide as possible. So wide that Karkat heard something snap.

That was the only warning that Karkat got before Dave tried to sink his teeth into his lips. He pulled away at the last second, smacking the back of his head against the ground in the process. The hand around Dave's jaw was the only thing keeping him held back. Bloodpusher pounding, lips still tingling from being pressed against Dave's, Karkat watched with subdued horror as any and all affection in the human's eyes was suddenly wiped away. The glassy look had returned, contempt bubbling just beneath. Karkat got the funny feeling that Dave's anger wasn't being directed at him.

In his frenzy to attack, to inflict pain, Dave shifted and Karkat had one leg able to move again. He didn't let himself hesitate. In one swift motion, he brought his knee up and slammed it hard between Dave's legs. Whatever humans had going on there, it was sensitive as fuck. Karkat winced in sympathy as Dave immediately crumbled, letting out a pained whimpering sound as the troll wriggled out from underneath him and quickly retreated to a safe distance. It would probably be a while until Dave felt like standing again, but he didn't want to risk it.

The Mayor was gone. Maybe he went to get Rose or Kanaya, or maybe he had retreated to defend Can Town's borders like any sensible mayor would in a similar situation. Karkat didn't care. The important thing was that he was alone.

Suddenly exhausted, Karkat sank to the ground on shaky legs. He touched a hand to his lips, unsurprised when his fingers came away tingled with green slime. Right. That made sense. Dave had been trying to lick off the sopor that Karkat had smeared all over himself when he'd kissed Dave in the first place.

What had he been thinking? Insisting that Dave was the same, that nothing had changed when _everything_ had? God, what was Karkat fucking _doing_ to himself?

He stayed like that, unmoving until Rose entered the block looking stricken. Karkat swiftly crushed his small flare of disappointment at the sight of her. He had been hoping for Kanaya, but it was better that it wasn't her. He didn't really feel like being comforted.

"What happened? Is Dave alright?" Rose asked as she crossed toward Karkat, eyes on her brother. She looked over at the troll and did a double-take, one slender blond brow arching at the sight of him. There was a pause while she looked him over, then Rose amended herself, "Are _you_ alright, Karkat?"

He shook his head, pulling his knees up to his chest and wrapping his arms tightly around himself. "Just wonderful," Karkat muttered. "Can we switch tasks? Just for a few days? I'll help Kanaya in the bookhive and you can watch over Dave."

Karkat almost added in "please," almost begged Rose to take it. She looked hesitant and confused, but not put off by the idea. If he pushed, he was certain that she would agree.

Just for a little bit. Just until Karkat felt like himself again. Whatever _that_ felt like.

She started to answer when a groan from Dave's direction cut her off. Both of them turned to look as the human rolled over onto his side, blinking quizzically as if he couldn't understand what he was looking at. Then Dave recoiled and let out a sound of annoyance, wincing. He reached one hand up and before either Karkat or Rose could stop him, Dave stuck a finger into his eye socket. He cocked his wrist and yanked, his right eye coming out cleanly with a shallow, dull pop. There were no nerves or receptors dangling out of the socket, what should have been keeping his eye in its place. Dave collapsed to the ground once more, mouth hanging open like his jaw no longer worker either, and sopor oozed out of his empty socket where blood should have been.

Had he not been so horrified, Karkat would have been sick. As it was, he couldn't look away from Dave. Only a few minutes ago, he had been lovingly gazing into those red eyes. And now one of them was rolling wetly across the floor.

"I'll do it," Rose said suddenly, startling Karkat. She wasn't looking at him but he hadn't expected her to. "You can start in the library with Kanaya right now if you want."

Want? What Karkat _wanted_ was to kiss Dave without having to worry about getting himself killed for his trouble. Or about other body parts decomposing right on top of him and falling off without warning.

But he did need a break. Karkat was so ridiculously exhausted. He nodded to Rose and tried not to feel guilty about it. "Yeah. Okay. Um, thanks."

He failed — no matter how Karkat justified himself, he felt very, _very_ fucking guilty.

Working in the bookhive with Kanaya wasn't all that difficult, though. Compared to handling Dave, it was really fucking boring. But it gave Karkat time to let his body heal and helped Kanaya make sure that he ate and slept correctly. Anymore, she didn't even bother trying to disguise her pale flirting as friendly concern. Karkat knew that he was going to have to talk to her about it eventually, but he kept putting it off to avoid the stress.

In dealing with Dave for so long, Karkat hadn't realized how worn out a ragged he had been feeling. He slept for a solid ten hours his first night back in his recuperacoon, which was the longest he had managed in his life. It felt like someone had yanked a massive pole out of his ass and, without the forced support that kept him going, Karkat had simply collapsed. Dragging himself around the bookhive from one pile of hopefully relevant information to the next wasn't helping him feel very productive, but fuck it, it provided something for Karkat to do in between bouts of sleeping. Curling up in a soft corner with a heavy, dusty book was actually surprisingly soothing. Karkat wasn't used to relaxing, but despite the boredom, it was nice.

Mostly, anyway. It didn't actually help keep away his worry for Dave, but Rose kept Kanaya updated and Karkat could read the messages over her shoulder if she didn't feel like telling him about it. It wasn't as though Kanaya was going to go out of her way to keep Karkat in the dark.

The worst thing that happened was that Dave's wrist was so weak from both deterioration and the damage done with Karkat's claws that, when he pulled against the chains, the bones splintered and the whole hand was left dangling from a bloody stump by little strings of skin that Rose had to muster up the courage to cut off herself. Karkat had almost gone down to the block to see the damage himself, but Kanaya had cut off his exit with a firm scowl.

"You won't do anyone any good by running in there in a panic," she had told him. "Rose is already handling it. Trust her and let yourself think about something other than Dave."

The only reason that Karkat begrudgingly returned to sorting through old Alternian medical documents was that he hadn't wanted her to continue. He didn't have the energy to yell at her or fight her or tolerate her papping and shushing… Or to listen to her repeat what all of their other friends had been telling him _ad nauseum_ for wipes. That Dave was already dead, that even if they could cure him of his sopor aliment that the damage was done, that Dave didn't care if Karkat visited because he didn't have the capacity to care anymore, that there was no one in his thinkpan to save anymore and that, even if there was, Dave wouldn't want to be forced to live like an animal.

None of it meant anything. Karkat blocked it all out. Their logic, their reason, their good points… He didn't want to hear a word of it. All he really wanted was for Dave to be okay again. Why was that asking for too much?

Nothing in Karkat's life had ever been easy or played out according to plan, but… just once. Just once, something had to work. The universe could cut him some slack. As far as Karkat cared, Fate was a bitter, sordid bitch and she owed him at least one good thing. One favor. One idea that would work.

The bookhive provided no answers. Hundreds of books and not one of them was helpful.

At the end of their search, when every single medical-related tomb was shoved into the giant, heaping "not useful" pile of which nearly all of the books they cracked open currently resided, Karkat sat down right in the middle of the floor and held his head in his hands. He wasn't surprised, but he was disappointed. Crushed. Sickened with himself and his friends and all of paradox space.

Maybe it was yet another punishment for him. A long, harsh fucking up the ass from whoever was pulling the strings. Karkat had always wondered how such a fragile species could be the dominant species of their planet, asked himself many times how the universe he'd had a hand in creating could have churned out such weak-looking lifeforms. And he finally had his answer: they weren't dominant at all, they were just unlucky enough to survive to a violent and brutal end.

Kanaya had tried to shush him, sensing Karkat's distress even if he wasn't crying. He hadn't been able to muster up any dismay fluid for a wipe by that point, not that it made him any less miserable than usual.

As soon as she knelt down to hold him, Karkat stood. He turned his back to Kanaya and her comfort and unconditional pity and the promise of protection. He didn't deserve it, he didn't want it, and he didn't need it. Karkat was just so sick of it, so worn to the bone, so _exhausted_. He wished that he could cry but he had strained himself dry.

"Stop it," he rasped, staring blankly at the wall in front of him. "You're not my moirail, Kanaya, and I'm not pale for you. I'm sorry for leading you on, I really am, but please… Please, just fucking stop. I'm not your problem." Karkat bit back the urge to berate himself, knowing that such insults would only make her pity him more. Instead, he forced himself to stand tall and didn't look back at her as he crossed the room to the transportilizer. "I'm going to see Dave. I would ask you not to tell Rose, but I know you wouldn't fucking listen to me, so go ahead and let her know to expect me. I'll see you around."

He wondered what Kanaya would have looked like if he had bothered to turn around. Hurt, maybe. Angry? Betrayed? The mental image of pity in her eyes, which had become all-too-familiar over the course of Dave's "impairment," made Karkat wince. And worse still, some small part of him was soothed by the thought. He wanted comfort — every troll did — and Kanaya was so willing to provide, so earnest in her feelings, _so good at it_, but…

But she wasn't Dave. And Karkat couldn't _breathe_ without thinking about him.


	6. it's a perfect day, to float away

Sure enough, when Karkat arrived at what had become Dave's temporary medical block, Rose was standing there waiting for him. In the five days she had been looking after him alone, she had changed some things. Dave's corner at the end of the room was the same, soft with pillows and blankets and soaked in a rotten mix of blood and sopor. He was still chained. Rose didn't have a scratch on her, which made sense. It wasn't like Dave would have been able to hurt Karkat if he had just kept the correct amount of distance between them, but it had been so difficult to remember that when Dave looked him in the eye.

Not that the human was doing much "looking" anymore. According to Rose, the degeneration of Dave's eyes must have been aggravating his visual receptors, because he had gauged his remaining one out when it refused to pop free smoothly like the first one hand. She'd given him headphones so that he didn't try to take his ears off too, but it seemed like Dave was getting sick of all of his senses. As his thinkpan melted, things like visual or auditory stimulants became more difficult or painful for him to process. He chewed his own tongue out and, had his nose and sense of touch not already been dead, probably would have tried clawing up into his skull or ripping his own skin off.

"There's not really anyone here to visit anymore," Rose said when Karkat entered the block for the first time in days. He wondered if Kanaya had told her about his pale rejection, but figured that she hadn't. With the way that Rose looked, she didn't seem ready for anyone's emotional baggage. It felt as though she was about five seconds from falling over and sleeping for a wipe. Physically, sure, she wasn't injured, but Karkat had only seen similar levels of exhaustion in the mirror. "I mean, you can continue to come speak to a rotting corpse if you wish but we both know that isn't really "Dave" anymore, Karkat. It hasn't been for a while." When he stopped in the doorway, refusing to look at her, Rose's expression softened. "Please. No one wants to live like this. You're being irrational."

Karkat let out a disinterested huff. How many times did he have to continue to explain himself? "Of course I'm being irrational," he muttered. "I… can't, Rose. As shitty as this whole situation is, that "corpse" is the only constant I have. The only guarantee that some part of Dave is still hanging around. I'm not going to let him die and then watch that lump of blood and sopor decompose because, for one reason or another, his death was judged even _slightly_ Just. I can't take that risk. I can't—" He winced. "I can't handle having to see him in the dream bubbles. I'd rather he have no eyes than dead ones."

She said nothing, perhaps knowing that nothing she tried would sway him. Either way, the disappointment on Rose's face stung long after she had left.

Alone with Dave, Karkat sat a good distance on the floor away from him. With the human asleep, there wasn't any real need to stay back, but Karkat knew how suddenly Dave could snap to attention if he wanted to.

Though he had arrived knowing what to expect, Karkat couldn't completely cover his distaste with Dave's current state. He looked awful. Some of his chest had started to cave, ribs breaking at the slightest pressure, and his head was riddled with more of those little pot-holes like the one Gamzee had bashed into his skill. Sopor leaked from open sores across his entire body. His breathing was so faint that he might as well have not been doing it.

They were gradually lowering the sopor concentration of what they fed him, but the increments were so minute that they were all but insignificant. Dave was too dependent. It was like trying to coax someone into needing less oxygen. All they could do was kill him a few minutes slower than what unchanged doses would have eventually led to anyway.

Rose wouldn't be gone for very long, Karkat knew. If he wanted to say something to Dave, he needed to spit it out while things were still calm. While no one was pressuring him to let his best friend die, while Dave was still asleep and didn't want to hurt him, while Karkat could still manage to keep himself from crying…

He reached up, wiping his thumb idly over his cheek. Nothing. Not even a bead of moisture. Was something wrong? Was Karkat broken, too? He wasn't sure if he cared or not.

Where had caring ever gotten him? It seemed like all Karkat ever did was care but he didn't do anything about it. He cared about Vriska paralyzing Tavros, but not enough to go scrape the poor guy off the dirt. He cared about Eridan being alone on his planet with nothing but angels to kill and his ugly thoughts, but not enough to go out of his comfort zone and into that borderline-pale territory to be a good friend. He cared when Feferi and Kanaya had been killed right in front of him, but all he had been able to do was watch and cry and drop Sollux down a flight of stairs afterward.

_"Pathetic"_ wasn't a strong enough word. Karkat was _inutile_. He was far beneath deserving anyone's pity. Karkat thought that a firing squad would be apter. Finally, something that would put him out of everyone else's misery.

The door opened, momentarily breaking Karkat from his thoughts. It caused Dave to shift in his sleep, smacking his hand against the wall and snapping one of the bones in his fingers in the process. Karkat barely even flinched. As expected, Dave didn't react at all.

"I'm not going anywhere, Rose," he sighed without turning around. "I'm not going to go lay down and "take care of myself," or whatever fucking psuedo pale advice you humans have such a fixation on handing out to any mildly-pitiable individual who looks your way. It's sitting my ass right goddamn here and that's where it's going to stay."

There was a huff of laughter from behind him, in a voice that was most assuredly not Rose's. Karkat turned, surprised, but said nothing as Vriska crossed the room toward him. In truth, he was a bit unsure how to react to her appearance. Terezi used to visit Dave, before he got so bad, and Vriska would occasionally tag along but she never said much or even seemed that interested. It wasn't as though she was close to Dave. As far as Karkat knew, she had never visited him of her own volition.

She stopped right next to Karkat, though she didn't sit. Not that she was floating, either. Both of her feet were firmly on the ground. Vriska brought a hand up to her mouth, muffling a long, drawn-out, and over-exaggerated yawn before fixing Karkat with a scowl.

"I didn't know you were so spineless behind that thesaurus and caps lock fetish," she remarked, head tilted curiously as though she wasn't entirely sure what she was looking at. "I mean, I always suspected, but I never thought you would turn around and prove it! Goddamn, Karkat. You're absolutely shameless. I'm surprised you're not touching yourself right now to all of the pity rolling off of you in _waaaaaaaaves_."

Ordinarily, Karkat might have shot back something about how Vriska's only substance was how much she hated herself, and how she didn't even have that anymore because Terezi for some reason thought she was deserving of pity, and how she was nothing but an empty, cold-hearted bitch pretending to be snarky so that no one could see her insecurities. But ordinarily, Dave would have been there to agree that Vriska was a tool or laugh at Karkat's furious banter or elbow him in the side when he was getting too riled up. He simply couldn't be bothered to deal with Vriska. He didn't even have the energy to roll his eyes.

Karkat sighed and looked away from her, focusing on a spot on the far wall so that he didn't have to look at her or at Dave. "Clever. Although it's a shame that you spent hours coming up with a _"sick bbbbbbbburn,"_ just to tell me what I already know. If that's all, would you kindly and quietly fuck off? I'm not in the mood for your insufferable brand of bullshit."

She startled him by groaning loudly, stamping her foot like a child throwing a fit. "_See_? This — _this right here!_ — is what I'm fucking talking about! Everyone's been moping around since Strider got sick! Terezi hardly wants to do anything but lay in the pile with Pyralspite, Kanaya won't leave Rose's side, _Lalonde_ is too busy crying when she doesn't have her hands full with pretending she's not sad! _For fuck's sake_, I even tried the goddamn Mayor and Gamzee for company, but those two must be the only ones with any sense, because they're nowhere to be found! But you, Karkat, you're the _absolute woooooooorst_ of them all!"

Vriska suddenly dropped down to his level, on her knees on the ground, and grabbed Karkat forcefully by the shoulders. She jammed one pointed claw into his chest, right in the middle of his sign. "You are a fucking joke, you know that? You wasted all those sweeps before the Game building yourself up to be some _amaaaaaaaazingly_ capable warrior, some sort of leader or, fuck, maybe even a hero! All of that whining, all that bitching, all of those paragraphs and paragraphs of grey text— Was it all a lie, huh? A trick? Some vaguely amusing way for you to pass the time while obsessively counting down the days until you reached maturity and were killed by the drones for having swill in your veins? All of that shit you wasted our goddamn time on, just so it can all crumble because some pink alien is falling apart at the seams and instead of fixing it, you're sitting here, _complaining_! Oh, woe is Karkat, he's had it so hard! No one respects him, no one likes him, he had to grow up dirt-fucking poor under the boot of a society that was primed and eager to crush him over just one misstep! Get fucking _over it_ and _pull yourself together_! I _refuse_ to believe that this is the best all of you _useless little bitches_ can do! I refuse to believe that _this_ is all your personality boils down to!"

Stunned, Karkat said nothing. His mouth moved, almost forming words, but no sound came out. He had always had a special sort of back and forth with Vriska, but she had never spoken to him like that before. He had never seen her so serious.

For a long minute, they stared at each other, unmoving. Karkat's mouth felt dry but he managed, far weaker than he wanted to sound, "What's your point?"

That got an eye roll, like Vriska couldn't believe that she had to spell it out for him. She tightened her grip on his shoulders and gave a good, hard shake. "I'm saying, if you're so miserable, _do something about it_! Because the longer all of you let him waste away, the more _you_ waste away. And I'm sick of watching it!"

Alright, that conversational thread was one that Karkat was familiar with and he latched onto it with wild abandon. "You mean kill him, don't you?" Karkat bared his fangs, growling in warning. "Damnit, you've said that to me before! What makes this time any different?" He snapped.

"I don't have the patience to repeat myself," Vriska announced. She let go of him, shoving him back for good measure so that Karkat had to catch himself on his elbows. "Here's what's different. Are you listening? I have your _uuuuuuuundivided_ attention? Good." With a brief flurry of little blue lights, Vriska reached into her strife specibus and pulled out her eight, eight-sided die. Holding them between her fingers, they gleamed in the light. Every side facing Karkat was emblazoned with the number eight. "The others have been going along with your needy, wiggler hoofbeast shit, but I'm done. So either _you_ kill Dave, or I will. Make your choice, _"leader."_ Tick tock," she said with a taunting grin.

"You wouldn't," Karkat snarled, but even as he reached instinctively for his strife deck, he knew that it was a lost cause. His bloodpusher was screaming in his ears and all he could think was a single-minded chant of, _"no no no no no no no."_ Because it was over. Vriska had delivered her ultimatum and the one thing that she never did was back down from a challenge.

She flicked her wrist dismissively, tossing the four die in her hand idly. "You can believe that if it'll make you feel better, Karkat! I know it's gotta be _haaaaaaaard_. You never really had the bloodlust that other trolls did, which is why I'm so generously offering you the chance to do this yourself! You know, make it as painless as possible for the poor guy." The amusement faded from Vriska's face as she caught her die one last time, making a gesture as though about to roll them. "I'm God Tier, idiot, remember? I can't _not_ get a good weapon when I roll. So unless you wanna watch me crush your "boyfriend's" head like a small pack of grubsause, you'll muster up the courage to do it yourself. What's it gonna be, Karkat? I didn't know you would so easily give me the satisfaction."

Through his blind panic and the desire to tear Vriska full of holes, Karkat knew that she was right. His inability to do more than cry for the past perigee or so had finally come back around and smacked him in the face. He had two choices. Only two. She wasn't going to give him a loophole and Karkat knew it. And he was completely incapable of decided what he wanted, but he knew for sure what he _didn't_ want.

Vriska tossed all of her die into one hand and shrugged like she didn't give a shit either way but still managed to be disappointed. "If you insist, Karkat. But it's your loss." She went to roll, only to stop before her fingers could loosen as a hand wrapped around her wrist.

On shaky legs, Karkat was nonetheless standing, and he squeezed Vriska's wrist in his grip as tightly as he could. She didn't outwardly react, other than to wince, but that was enough for him to know that it hurt. Good. He let his grip loosen, at least enough to not be painful. "You're not going to lay even a single one of your deplorable prongs on him," Karkat hissed, leaning as close to her as he dared. "Get. The _fuck_. Out. I'll kill him myself. This is my problem, my responsibility, and _he's mine_, too, goddamnit. None of you have the right so don't bother _trying_." He dug his claws into her wrist, earning a startled gasp as little pinpricks of cerulean bubbled down her arm. Karkat's voice was a whisper. "If you threaten him again, Serket, I _promise_ that I will make you _wish_ that you would stop resurrecting."

There was a moment where Karkat almost thought that she was going to kiss him. Vriska's gaze dropped down to his lips, a potent look of loathing burning in her eyes. He faltered, pulling back merely an inch, but that was enough. The moment was broken. She smiled, almost bitter, and yanked her arm free from Karkat's hold. "That's more like it," she commended.

When she flipped her hair over her shoulder, she made sure to hit him in the face with it. It didn't inspire any hatred in him, only mild annoyance. Maybe Vriska already knew that it was a hopeless pursuit because she didn't turn back or taunt him any further. She swept out of the block as confidently as she had strutted in.

Karkat made a mental note to thank her later. And to be earnest about it. That ought to send the message that he wasn't interested in a kismesissitude.

But for the time being, he took a long, shaky breath and finished pulling his sickle out of his strife specibus. It was freshly sharpened, just in case he needed it for self-defense. He hadn't imagined that he'd be using it for what he was about to do, but… well, someone had to. And no one else deserved to end Dave's life more than the person who had ruined it.

If— no, _when_ Dave came back, he was never going to want to speak to Karkat again.

He didn't let himself think about it any longer. Karkat marched over to where the human was still sleeping and dropped down, straddling Dave as if he couldn't feel the bones grinding beneath skin in protest of his added weight or the muscles that no longer had the definition to strain. Dave was awake but, without eyes or other useful senses, all he really did was twitch like an insect.

Gently, Karkat eased his sickle behind Dave's head, right around his slim neck. He focused on the chest rising and falling beneath him, the way Dave's squelching breaths filled the air between them, the lethargic pounding of his bloodpusher. All of those little signs of life, things that Karkat had so adored, and he was going to yank them away. He had to. So that maybe Dave would be able to look at him again and really see him, even if he was disgusted by what he saw. Just the chance, even being slapped by Dave so long as he was aware of who he was hitting and why... It would be worth it.

For Dave.

"I'm sorry," Karkat whispered. He squeezed his eyes shut so tightly that it hurt and, with one smooth jerk, yanked his sickle through Dave's throat. He heard the human's deflated skull hit the ground with a sickening, wet slap but he couldn't stand to look.

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Every second spent waiting was agony but Karkat refused to leave. He wasn't going to let Dave come back after such an ordeal to an empty block. Because Dave was going to come back. He had to. If he didn't, Karkat would…

Well, he wasn't sure what he would do. Just that it ended with all of paradox space as his bitch because there was absolutely no way he was letting the universe get away with this. He'd rip Lord English's stupid fucking skull head off with his bare hands if it meant that Dave would get to enter the new universe like the rest of them.

Or maybe he'd stay behind and fuck around the rest of eternity with Dave's ghost. If he didn't hate Karkat after everything, anyway.

He entertained the thought of letting the others know about Dave's death so that they could be there to greet him after his resurrection too, but… Selfishly, Karkat really didn't want to. He wanted to have Dave to himself, if only for a few minutes. Thinking back on what he had said to Vriska, that Dave was "his," made him cringe but Karkat couldn't say that he wasn't being honest.

He was a greedy and self-serving person. It was no wonder that every crush he'd ever had on someone vacillated or that he couldn't be happy just having Dave as his matesprit or moirail. He wanted it all, every mind-numbingly absurd second of it. Karkat wanted to do those stupid couple things with Dave like hold hands and lean on each other whenever he wanted, wherever he wanted, for as long as he wanted. And he wanted to comfort that idiot when he woke from a dayterror too shaken to sleep. And when they fought, Karkat wanted to clutch him close and kiss until they could no longer remember how to speak and their anger was lost somewhere in the shrinking distance between their skin. He wanted Dave to keep him calm and controlled, in his own head, and he wanted to do the same in return.

It was depraved, but there was little that Karkat could do about it. He had never wanted anything more. Except, perhaps, for Dave to open his eyes.

Flickering lights from across the room caught Karkat's attention and he found himself holding his breath. He had never watched a God Tier be resurrected before. It looked almost like the Game was glitching with its most basic of functions. The crumpled remains of Dave's body levitated several feet off of the ground, light of every color pouring from his skin until he was little more than a silhouette, framed and surrounded by a glow so bright that it made Karkat's eyes sting to look directly at it. He watched anyway, fascinated and awed and a little horrified as Dave's decapitated dead glitched and disappeared in a shower of stardust, like a chimera, like it was never there at all.

The head reappeared a few moments after, attached firmly to Dave's neck. Not lolling about, not at risk of falling off. Perfectly capable of supporting its own weight. Karkat had never been so happy to see someone capable of basic bodily functions.

The light didn't fade — it cut out all at once, like flipping a switch. Scrambling forward, Karkat barely had his hands outstretched and legs beneath himself when Dave fell heavy into his arms. And he coughed like he was dying all over again, curling in on himself and clutching his head with one hand while the other pounded against his chest. Red, tired eyes flickered over to Karkat without any aviators to protect them.

But it was _Dave_. Obnoxiously white hair, skin with a healthy flush instead of the cloudy look that sopor gave it, awareness in his gaze, a heart that was beating regularly and lungs that were pulling in air normally and, _oh fuck_, he smelled like himself again. Karkat wasn't sure if he wanted to laugh or cry or vomit but he hadn't been so happy in his entire miserable life.

"Dave!" Karkat almost kissed him, right then and there, he was so relieved. He was smiling uncontrollably and he was pretty sure that he was giggling too, not that he cared enough to make it stop. He stared at Dave's eyes to avoid looking at his lips (and also because he had really missed those eyes and seeing that color on Dave) and crushing his friend into a tight hug. "Oh my God, you're back. Holy shit, I thought— I thought that there was no damn way the Game would bring you back, but you're here. You're awake a-and breathing, and—!" He suddenly pulled back, fixing Dave's confused gaze with a scowl as he held up three fingers. "How many prongs am I holding up?"

Grimacing, Dave looked from Karkat's fingers back to his face and blinked slowly. "Dude, I'm tired, not retarded. I was dead, man, cut me some slack. Give a guy a break," he groaned.

That time, it was a physical struggle to not kiss Dave for all that he was worth. Karkat managed, but only barely, ducking his head to press against Dave's shoulder as he again squeezed the human tightly. "I was so worried," he rasped. "I… I was convinced that you wouldn't come back. Fuck, Dave, I'm so sorry. There isn't even a word for how apologetic and regretful I am. I will spend every day of the rest of my life apologizing and it will never come close, never even approximate a fraction of a menial percentage of how penitent I am, Dave. I can't tell you enough how—"

He was cut off when Dave pressed a finger over his lips, touch so exceedingly gentle that it startled Karkat more than a slap might have. He held his breath and tried to resist the urge to pap Dave, stare overwhelmingly fond as he waited quietly for his friend to speak.

"I might be missing something," Dave began slowly, "but what are you…? What happened? Karkat, dude, please don't fuckin' tell me that you're crying. Why would—?"

As soon as his words cut off, Karkat winced. Realization was dawning on Dave's face and, with it, Karkat was certain that hatred would swiftly follow. His memories were probably fuzzy with sopor and death hadn't helped him orient himself, but Dave was going to remember it all. He was going to loathe Karkat. And when he did, if he felt like following through on his many high attempts to take Karkat's life, well… He doubted that he would be able to fight Dave off. He hated himself so much that Karkat doubted he would even want to.

"I'm sorry!" Karkat blurted out before Dave could say anything. He actually was crying again, damn. At least he wasn't broken. No, Karkat Vantas was still very much capable of producing dismay fluid. Because everyone was so worried about that. "Oh God, fuck, this was all my fault! All of it! I couldn't have known what effects sopor would have on a person and I went and gave it to you anyway because I wanted you to like me! I— I was so fucking desperate for even the appearance of filled quadrants that I shoved it all down your stupid squawk gapper like the blithering pile of half-dead maggots that I am! Dave, I wish I could undo all of this, please don't hate me. We don't even have to be friends anymore! Fuck, it's not like I blame you for that completely understandable reaction! At most, all I want is to be in the same room as you sometimes, just so I'll visually be able to tell that you're alright. We can set up a goddamn schedule, if you want, and overlay the times we'll both be in the mainblock so that you make sure you only see me when you can stomach it, and—"

"_Karkat_, shut up!" Dave snapped, looking frustrated. Almost immediately the troll stopped talking, snapping his jaw shut and recoiling. To Karkat's mild surprise, though, Dave didn't hit him. Instead, he clutched at his hair with both hands and shook his head. "_Goddamnit_, dude, it feels like a million bells just _stopped_ using my head for a goddamn orgy site! I wanna be able to enjoy some quiet and, y'know, the ability to think about something other than _sopor_ for the first time in over a month! And I swear to _fucking_ God, Karkat, if you apologize or try blaming yourself for something again, I will shut you up myself. Maybe I'll even do that troll thing and shush you good and hard. Huh? How does that sound? You wanna force my hand like that, Karkat? You want my hand caressing your face as I murmur reassurances and promises of platonic devotion? Is that what you want?"

_"Yes,"_ was what Karkat wanted to say, but Dave wasn't attacking him yet and he didn't want to push his luck. He stayed quiet, trying to give Dave the time that he needed to think. He had been through a lot. Karkat wasn't even sure how much of what happened he remembered, so there was no reason to panic. Not yet, anyway. Maybe Dave still considered him a friend.

"Man, dying sucks ass. I have such a massive headache," Dave muttered. He brushed his hair back, rubbing his eyes as though unused to having them there. He didn't ask for his shades, which Karkat had removed several wipes before and kept in his sylladex ever since, so that didn't seem to be the problem. Karkat almost asked, but Dave dropped his hand and pulled out of his arms, sitting up on his own with a heavy sigh. "Look. I'm gonna say some shit because I think you need to hear it. And it's probably going to sound pretty pathetic and tragic, but I need you to _not_ have a best friend orgasm until I finish my sad tale, alright? Alright."

He didn't want for Karkat to agree, which was probably for the best because the troll wouldn't have. Dave just took a deep breath and started talking, looking at the ceiling as he did. "So. I don't know how to explain the sort of shit I saw in the dream bubbles so I'm not gonna. The alternate mes are bad enough, but a lot of their memories have dead Johns and Jades and Roses and... " He trailed off. "Sometimes you," Dave admitted as though it took an enormous amount of effort. "Anyway, I… yeah, to start this whole shit show, I wasn't sleeping well. So sad, much tragic." He rolled his eyes and scoffed. "Whatever. I didn't think much of it, really, but after you started letting me sleep in your slime coon, I realized how tired I was. And how stressed I felt, too. It was sorta like… I was carrying all of this crushing weight that I didn't even notice I had until someone lifted it off. Y'know what I mean?"

"Yes," Karkat muttered softy. He did. Being on the meteor was boring at first, but… but _fuck_, was it nice to not have to worry about routine drone checks or blushing in public and having everyone in the area out for his disgusting blood or not having to worry about how long he was going to live because it was no longer on a timer. He understood exactly what Dave was talking about. The feeling was dizzyingly euphoric. He couldn't blame someone for getting high off of that release.

Dave, either having not heard him or deciding not to comment, let out a sharp breath as a strangled groan. "Goddamn, that was a nice feeling. I don't need to get bogged down in my daddy issues or shitty home life, but yeah. With that, plus all these other mental traumas this Game seems to have a hard on for giving everyone, it was nice to just be able to sleep and not have to think about all of that nonsense for once. So I started sleeping more often, because it felt better than being awake. You found me out though, and…" For the first time since he started talking, Dave looked Karkat in the eye, an ashamed grimace on his face. "I'm really not proud of the way that I treated you, Karkat. I got all pissy and defensive because I thought that you were — and this is gonna sound weird, but stick with me a little longer and we'll have questions at the end — trying to hog the sopor for yourself. Which is stupid, looking back, because Kanaya can make as much of the damn stuff as we want, but paranoia is never really… logical. And the only reason I went back and apologized to you was because I didn't wanna lose those coon-sleeping privileges by pissing you off. That, and, uh…" He turned red, thinking about something, then looked away and said, "It was easier to sneak out bits of sopor for my stash if I was allowed in your room. I started keeping it after that, just in case you ever pulled the rug out from under me or if being sober was… too much." Dave winced. "Goddamn, that sounds so pathetic out loud."

Even though he didn't think that Dave was telling the truth, Karkat nodded anyway. He was eager to hear Dave's perspective on all that had happened. And not just the, uh, parts where they kissed.

After a moment, Dave gathered himself again and continued. "After that, it's all pretty fuzzy. I started taking more and more of that sopor shit, not even because I needed to calm down but because I didn't want to get to the point where I needed to calm down. It was nicer to be… always up in the damn clouds than bother coming back down to earth. I guess that's where the more, um, physical changes started happening. I didn't even notice the whites of my eyes looked like the other point-one percent of bacteria until you pointed it out. And by that point, I didn't really give a fuck." He sighed and let himself fall back, folding his hands behind his head and propping one leg up over his knee as if they were having a casual discussion and not talking about what pushed Dave to a deadly addiction.

"Yeah, anyway, then I'm pretty sure you guys took all the fucking sopor away. I may've been a lot sneakier than I let you clue in on, Karkat. All that sopor I saved up… It was supposed to last a month. And I finished all of it in those three days before your intervention. Just fuckin' chugged it all like a heavy-weight champ. Like, honestly, what I remember of showing up to your room is a bunch of colors and also being really pissed for some reason. I think aggression was just, like, the default with that shit because I think my body became so accustomed to the calming parts that I bypassed it completely and went to the next best thing. Which is hating absolutely everyone forever and wanting to kill them all." He stumbled, glancing quickly at Karkat. "I, uh… yeah. Sorry about that. It wasn't anything personal, I was just… so angry, all the time, for no reason. It felt like everyone was out to get me and I didn't deserve it."

There was a pause that Dave didn't seem in a hurry to fill. Maybe he was waiting for Karkat's forgiveness, but as far as he could tell, Dave wasn't the one who needed to be forgiven. He hadn't done anything wrong. Karkat should have known better and he should have been paying better attention from the start. It was his fault. He was so convinced that it felt like a fact. It was ludicrous to him that anyone could suggest another way of placing the blame.

Still, Dave's monologue helped clear up one thing. He definitely remembered kissing Karkat, if he remembered choking him out. But he was avoiding bringing it up. Why? Did the thought disgust him so much or did he simply not want to make Karkat uncomfortable?

"I don't blame you," Karkat said finally. He pulled his legs up to his chest, balancing his chin on his knees to stare at Dave with tired eyes. The human kept his gaze firmly on the ceiling. "Dave, I… I'm not sure what all you remember about what happened after your state worsened considerably, but I want to apologize. From the start, I should have—" He cut himself off when Dave held up a hand, signaling patiently for Karkat to go back to being quiet. And, as much as he didn't want to, the troll obeyed and snapped his jaw shut.

"Dude, don't make me fuckin' shoosh you," Dave warned. The thought made Karkat's intestines twist into tight knots. "I don't want to make you cheat on Kanaya or steal your _pap-ginity_ or whatever, but I will. I fuckin' will if you don't lemme finish, alright? We're in agreement? You can nod, that's fine."

Despite himself, Karkat was smiling when he gave Dave an answering nod. He hadn't realized how much he had missed their shitty banter. Or, well, _everything_ about Dave. Even the human's nervous habit of drumming his fingers against his thigh made a dull, barely-there thudding noise that Karkat found familiar and comforting. So he would be quiet for Dave. It was the least he could do.

Once he was sure that Karkat was sticking to his word about being quiet, Dave sighed and relaxed again. He closed his eyes, probably finding it easier to pretend that he wasn't trying to avoid staring at Karkat. "Okay, right. So here's my last in-tact, reliable memory. Everything after is either a dream, hallucination, or some really nasty shit that I'm _hoping_ was one of the two. I was waking up and you were there. You were saying some shit that I wasn't really listening to because I was mostly just annoyed that you kept talking and wouldn't be quiet. My head hurt really bad and I felt like I was dying or something, but you were above me and… I don't know. I think I just hyper-focused on something because everything else was overwhelming me. But suddenly, I really wanted you to be quiet. And I really wanted to kiss you." He admitted that last part as a whisper and Karkat almost had the breath knocked out of him at the revelation. Dave remembered that, had been aware of his decision, had _wanted_ it.

Goddamn. What did it mean?

"And I did," Dave continued, regaining Karkat's attention. "I mean, two birds, one stone and all that. It made perfect sense to me. I kiss you, you stop talking. So I was doing that, right? Not really thinking about anything else, and then I get pulled away. Looking back, I think that it was… Vriska who did that. Or Terezi, maybe. Either way, I start lashing out pretty good and I think that I used my time powers without meaning to. Usually I have to make a conscious decision to get from A to B, but I was just suddenly in your room. And you were there. The fixation I had, it was… made things streamlined. I had a lot going on in my head, Karkat. I'm sorry about that, but I just… Fuck, I really wanted to be around you. Back before, when we lounged every day and dicked around in your room… Those were some of my best and calmest days, no matter how much sopor I had. I hunted you down subconsciously I think, because I… I was just so angry and confused and tired. And you always made those feelings… lesser." He took a deep breath. "I'm sorry for kissing you. I— I never should have. _Especially_ not like that."

Karkat felt choked up, blinking away another bout of crying. He wanted to ask what Dave meant by the word "never" — as in, he should never kiss Karkat, under any circumstances? — but couldn't bring himself to get the words out. Instead, he shifted a little closer to Dave. Just a few inches, but it made the human tense all the same. "Why did you do it, then?" He asked as a whisper, unable to peel his eyes away from Dave. "Kiss me, I mean."

With a strangled noise of frustration, like he had been hoping to avoid answering that question, Dave threw his hands up and pushed himself into a sitting position. "I don't know, dude! Maybe because the fucking sopor made it impossible for me to think about much else? I kinda narrowed everyone down into one-word descriptors, but you were always so fucking kissable I just could help myself, I guess. Or maybe it's because you have a really cute face? Or because I've wanted to kiss you for, like, over a year now. So. Y'know, there's _that_."

Dave folded his arms across his chest, glaring petulantly at the floor. "And for the record, you don't have to say that I have a kissable face too or anything like that. I don't care. I don't care if you don't feel the same as long as you tell me before I get my hopes up that you just wanna be bros. Because I'll take that. Fucking gladly, too. If there's one thing that I learned from dying, it's that I should've tried kissing you _forever_ ago, so... " He shrugged, shrinking into himself. For all of his bravado, Karkat could see Dave nearly on the verge of panic. "Do with that info what you will."

What was the protocol for if your long-time crush admitted to wanting to kiss you? Karkat had no idea. He had never been in such a situation before. He had never even fathomed that someone could want such a thing from him. Of all the things he could have asked, of the dozens of questions running through his head, Karkat settled on, "You would be fine with… anything? Any quadrant? You really wouldn't… care if I wanted to be just friends?" It probably came out different from how Karkat was intending it to sound. Insecurity and disgust sounded awfully similar.

Evidently, Dave took it the second way. He flinched as though Karkat had slapped him and studied his shoes to avoid looking anywhere near the troll. "Yeah," he managed after a moment, making a noise almost like he was choking. "I mean, um, mostly. I don't…" He trailed off, sighed, and started again. "I don't really wanna do quadrants. I don't… like the idea of you having anyone else. Which I know probably sounds really self-centered and stupid from your perspective, but that's how I feel. I think I'd be fine being bros for the rest of our lives if you didn't, like, kiss anyone or fist bump other people, either. If it was just me and you, however you wanna do it, that'd be… cool, I guess."

It was then that Karkat realized Dave was red-faced. He had to do a double-take because he had never seen his friend blush before, but there was no mistaking it. Dave was flushed from his neck to the tips of his ears, burning with a color almost as red as his eyes. Maybe it was the color, maybe it was the confession, or maybe it was the relief of having Dave back that pushed Karkat to do it, but he leaned forward and set a hand on his friend's knee. Startled, Dave looked up at him. It was a struggle to maintain eye-contact but Karkat forced himself to. His other hand hovered between both of them uncertainly, unsure if it should be by his side or resting on Dave's cheek.

"Is it okay if I kiss you?" Karkat asked, awkward and fumbling as he grappled for the right words. He was probably flushed as well if the way his face was burning meant anything. "If it's okay with you, I mean. I think that I would really like to try it while you're not high or brain dead or both. I… yeah. That would be pretty goddamn nice, Dave."

The human winced, though not at the offer. Guilt flashing in his eyes, Dave didn't pull away, but he tore his gaze away from Karkat's. "Dude, I'm not… I don't— Are you sure? I… I remember choking you out. I was really trying to kill you, Karkat. Even after that, you still don't mind… looking at me?" He licked his lips, anxious, but all Karkat could think was how that would feel against his tongue. "I thought you would hate me for what I did to you."

Karkat quirked his lips up into a smile. If he didn't, he was certain that he was going to cry again and he didn't have the patience for his own usual brand of bullshit. It was like there was a live wire running through his hand where it was touching Dave's knee, feeling his warmth even between the fabric of his pants. He sort of wanted to touch more. Carefully, he set his hand on the side of Dave's neck, sliding his touch up to cradle the human's head and gently brush against the little wispy hairs growing there.

"I didn't think you would want to talk to me ever again, after the way I let you down by letting this happen in the first place," Karkat admitted. He was quiet, but Dave was patient. "I don't want to argue over who's at fault. I'm so goddamn tired of all of this. I've never been so exhausted in my life, Dave." He meant it, too. He could barely raise his voice to a normal speaking volume and long sentences were becoming ridiculously hard. It would be really nice to lean against Dave and just let himself believe that things were going to be alright. "What if we… agree to disagree? And kiss. Sometimes. When you feel like it." Karkat cleared his throat awkwardly. "We can be "bros" the rest of the time, if you want. I don't mind if we don't fit into quadrants, Dave, as long as you don't end up putting someone else in your busy schedule." He smiled faintly. "I've thought about it and I don't think that I'm very good at sharing."

Those words did something funny to Dave's face. He didn't grin or beam or anything — the smile that he gave Karkat was one that the troll had seen before, but it seemed to encapsulate levels of hope and affection and relief that he had never known Dave capable of. "I think that what you just described is called being boyfriends, dude. I guess if we're being fair, we'll use the human name for it and then on our anniversary, you can roll us both into a cocoon or whatever trolls do to celebrate that shit."

Quickly muffling his laughter, Karkat moved closer. He bumped Dave's forehead against his gently. Wow. They were such idiots. It was a good thing that Karkat was too exhausted to keep pretending that he didn't want to kiss Dave, otherwise their reunion would have been a lot more awkward. "No deal. I'll keep the cocoon thing because that is, as a matter of fact, a real things that trolls do and not something that I'm saying to fuck with you. But "boyfriend" is a stupid name for it. We'll have to come up with one of our own." He made a shushing sound when it looked like Dave was going to add something, grinning and letting out an involuntary hum of pleasure when Dave almost immediately quieted right back down. "I meant later. We have something else to do now."

"We do?" Dave blinked, then blanched. "What? You were serious about… actually liking me? You wanna kiss? Like people who… who love each other or some shit? Because I was thinking that, um, actually, we could reschedule—"

Shushing clearly wasn't going to work, so Karkat did the only other sensible thing and kissed Dave. It felt exactly how pressing his lips against someone's who was just as inexperienced as he was ought feel. Dave's hand reached up, settling on Karkat's shoulder as though unsure, before the other came to rest on the troll's chest. His fingers curled into Karkat's sweater and it wasn't long before Dave was drawing him closer.

It wasn't the fireworks of perfection that Karkat had fantasized about when he thought of their first kiss, but in a lot of ways it was better. Mostly because Dave wasn't on the influence of sopor, or trying to kill him, and neither of them were crying, and it felt amazingly relaxing to let go and kiss Dave the way he had wanted to for so achingly long.

And, most importantly, they were finally kissing. It didn't matter how they did it, Karkat thought. He was just incredibly pleased to finally be doing it.

* * *

**A/N: Fuck, this is the longest oneshot I've ever written. Good thing that I cut it into chapters, huh?**

**Anyway, I hope this was a good end to October! And that this came across as creepy and freakish as I intended it to be (at least up until the end, where I indulged myself with DaveKat fluff because I earned it). I guess this sort of reads like a PSA for substance abuse, but it's really just an excuse for me to write body horror. I really enjoy that sort of shit.**

**Sorry if this sucked. I wrote the whole thing in five days to get it out in time for Halloween. I might come back and change some things later, but if you see any errors, don't go out of your way to tell me. Believe me, it bothers me just as much as it bothers you.**

**Thanks for reading!**


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